Wasim R Kapoor

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
1971 Diploma in Fine Arts From Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, 1st Class

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2006, 1984, 1974, 1970, 1969 Kolkata

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1994 Galerie 88, Kolkata
1993 Vadhera Art Gallery, New Delhi and Mumbai
1993 “Trends and Images”, CIMA Art Gallery, Kolkata
1993 “Wounds” at CIMA Art Gallery, Kolkata
1992 Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, France
1992 Exhibition of contemporary Art, Kassel, Germany
1991 & 1992 “Brush Strokes from Bengal”
1991 “Changing Images of Contemporary Art”, Mumbai
1991 Monsoon show Habiart, New Delhi
1990 5th Silver Jubilee All India Art Exhibition of State Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi and Lucknow
1990 “Art Mosaic” on Calcutta Tercentenary, Kolkata and Mumbai curated I.T.C and Chitrakoot Art Gallery
1990 Silver Jubilee of ‘Calcutta Painters’
1990 ‘Calcutta through the Eyes of Painters’ Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata
1990 3rd Biennial of Contemporary Indian Art, Bhopal
1989-1991 Annual exhibition of Galerie 88, Kolkata
1989-1991 National exhibition of Art, New Delhi
1989-1990 Traveling Exhibition of Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
1989 ‘Exhibition of Five Painters’, New Delhi
1989 Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Mumbai
1989 Exhibition of Calcutta Tercentenary, Kolkata
1989 Exhibition of Human Rights org. Alliance Francaise, Kolkata
1987 Exhibition of 8 Contemporary Artists of India, Birla Academy of Art & Culture Kolkata
1987 International Drawing Exhibition, Japan
1985 Painting Exhibition, govt. of West Bengal
1982 Exhibition of M.F Hussain, Kolkata
1982 & 1983 Exhibition of Four Painters, Sweden
1981-1982 Exhibition of Calcutta Painters, New Delhi
1981-1982 Picasso Centenary Exhibition org. ‘Calcutta Painters’, Kolkata
1976 AIFACS All India Surrealistic Art Exhibition, New Delhi
1975 & 1976 Traveling Exhibition of Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
1975 & 1976 AIFACS Portrait Exhibition, New Delhi
1969-1995 Annual Exhibition of Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata
1966-1983 All India Annual exhibition, Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata
1966-1975 All India Exhibition, AIFACS, New Delhi

AWARDS/HONOURS
1985 Shiromani Award Asian Paints
1984 Award, Govt. of West Bengal
1984 All India Award, Birla Academy of Art & Culture
1980-1983 All India Award Academy of Fine Arts

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Wasim Kapoor is an artist, who – while he documents the wounds that afflict an individual, a people or a society – is able to capture a strange beauty, even in the apparently brutal or sordid. He magnifies a mood or an emotion with marvelously sympathetic close-up views of the spiritual content underlying material reality.
In addition, his mastery of portraiture shines through in the fatigued postures and languid sexuality of the women in his “Nudes’ series. These portraits seem removed from Kapoor’s usual evocative minimalism, in the richness of detailing and light effects woven with subtle modulations of monochrome, into his depiction of the nudes and the room in which they sit. Yet a window, which opens out into an ambience of other-worldliness, and a suggestion of mystery, offsets the closeness of this interior space. There is an echo here of the haunting isolation and empty unending spaces anchored with the sparest of monochromatic detail, that transforms Kapoor’s artistic vision into a near-mystical experience in pictures like “Silence”. This is Kapoor’s characteristic style.
Shashi Baliga writes in the preface to ‘Shades of Time’. “Wasim Kapoor is a painter whose eye discovers beauty in the surreal and the mundane, in joy and in pain, in the shadow of despondency and the aura of glamour. Fascinated by woman in her endless forms, he has moved from the cloistered yearnings of the “Burkha” series … to the raw wounds of the prostitute in the ‘Victims’ and the abandon of the ‘Nudes’. These are unremittingly dark portraits; they do not celebrate womanhood but are filled with commiseration. His Nudes exhibit a tired sexuality, his Victims wear an air of degradation, the women in Burkha are caged animals waiting to break free … (he) is an artist who likes to walk on the grey side.”

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