K.S. Radhakrishnan
An outstanding artist and sculptor, K.S. Radhakrishnan, trained at Shantiniketan; Calcutta has a distinct identity among Indian sculptors. His creations have evoked curiosity and admiration from serious lovers of art. Radhakrishnan is definitely a breath of fresh air in the sculptural domain of India. Like many of his contemporaries he is a figurative sculptor, but his preference for modelling and bronze casting over new materials sets him apart from the rest.
With celebration of sensuality as one of its running themes, Radhakrishnan’s works are at once both intimate and universal in its appeal. A personal commemorative sculptor, with a scale and presence that holds well in natural settings, his work has found permanent home in a number of public collections all over the world.
According to Prof. R. Sivakumar, eminent art critic and professor at Shantiniketan, Calcutta, “A part of Radhakrishnan’s recent work can be read as an effort to dream a man and insert him into reality – the other part of his work can be read as an effort to picture aspects of this reality but that shall not concern us here. He calls the man he has imagined ‘Musui’, and for a few years now he has been on a journey with Misui….”
“Authors and artists are thus taken on journeys by the characters they give birth to just as our children take us along on their life’s journey. As in certain stories of Borges the dreams of characters shape the life on an artist or author just as his imagination had shaped them. This explains why an artist sometimes appears to be moving in different directions at the same time, or even be on conflicting courses…”
“Radhakrishnan’s work since then has been revolving around two themes or motifs. One centering on the individual figures of Musui and Maiya, his animus, his dream incarnate, his Eve pulled out of his psychological rib – remember Adam appears sleeping in Renaissance representations of the creation of Eve – and the other representing scores of figures in migration….”