Venkat Raman Singh Shyam

Venkat Raman Singh Shyam is one of India’s pioneering second-generation artists from the Pardhan Gond tradition. He started painting in his village Sijhora at the age of 10; by the age of 16, he was assisting his uncle, the seminal Gond master artist Jangarh Singh Shyam, then living in Bhopal. Venkat later moved to Delhi, where he met and was inspired by Jagdish Swaminathan and Manjeet Bawa. Venkat has exhibited widely, including in the National Gallery of Canada’s “Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art” exhibition in 2013, and solo shows at Virginia Tech’s Perspective Gallery in 2015, and Pullman Hotel, New Delhi in 2016. He has participated in international symposia in Italy, USA, UK, and Australia, where he was commissioned to do a mural for the Queensland Art Gallery. Venkat’s illustrated autobiography ‘Finding My Way’ (Navayana, 2015) has been warmly endorsed by the art historians B. N. Goswami and John Berger. He lives and works in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.