सारथी कला निकेतन Sarathi Kala Niketan: an oil painting by Gurudev Sarathi ji

Sarathi Kala Niketan

Sarathi Kala Niketan is dedicated to the life and works of Gurudev O.P.Sharma “Sarathi”. Dr. O.P.Sharma “Sarathi”- a multidimensional personality was born on 4^th of April at Mattan, Kashmir. Master of all trades an embodiment of writer, poet, painter, cartoonist, ayurvedachrya, photographer, music composer and above all human with all traits of love, brotherhood and sacrifice for the fellow beings. His basic initiation towards fine arts was from his home itself as his father Pt. Mansa Ram was a perfect vocalist and poet himself. Sarathi Says- It won’t be any exaggeration to say that instead of the lap of mother, I was born in the lap of Tabla and Tanpura. I grew old in my childhood only. You can imagine a boy of 16-17 years mastering complex ragas of Indian Classical Music also remembers works of Ghalib by heart and studies Faiz and had knowledge of Iqbal too. His mother Smt. Ram Dai was deeply religious. Sarathi was initiated in the field of Arts by the great Master Pt. Sansar Chand Sharma. He remembers-the instinct for painting was right from school days. I Devdass, Vidhya Rattan and Girdhari would get pocket money for purchasing eatables. Instead we would buy rubber and pencil and would make drawings on envelopes.
In 1952, O.P.Sharma Sarathi joined Army in the trade of a painter, that five year stint in the army was to later become a launching pad for plunge in to field of creative arts. There a colonel spotted the talent in the young painter and had him removed from the workshop. Colonel Gill assigned him the copying job of great Master pieces of Rapheal, Titian, Tinttoretto etc. for use in Officers mess. Sarathi Says- it was a real practice after my theoretical practice from Masterji. I made about 50-60 copies of great works. It was infact there that I learnt figuration. Then illustration influenced his creative process and he started doing landscapes. However he diverted from landscape also and started doing portraits. Sarathi feels- Landscape is a womens world. I felt there is nothing original to say so I started perfection in portraits. I consider portraits as the toughest job in painting. Later I realized that there is no fun in making what we can simply see. I based my paintings on various shalokas of Bharatarihari, Vedas and upnishdas, yogasbhyas. This transformation came around 1966-67. Since then I am doing the same thing. In the same year he organized his first One Man Exhibition in the state. . It was followed by many more.
Again while in Army he got exposed to yet another field of creative ex-pression literature. It was at initiation of one Hari Chand that Sarathi got the chance of studying the classical Indian Literature like Greh dah of Sarat Chandra and other works of Prem chand and Rahul.This opened wider vistas of ex-pression for him. He started having more affection towards literature than to painting. Immediately he started off with urdu short stories. His first Urdu Short stories collection Umren was published in the year 1965. Till date Sarathi has written stories in Urdu, Dogri, Hindi and Punjabi, most of them in Dogri in topics ranging from horrors of war (Laam), helpless farmers (Sukka Barood), exploitation of landlords (salamati tain), complexities of modern times (parivartan), selfishness of common man and changing values. It is no surprise that he got his first J&K Academy award in 1972 for his short story collection in Dogri Sukka Barood. It was followed by Lok Gai Lok and others. In 1971 and 1974 he published two nice collections of Dogri poems Tandaan and Partaan respectively. In hindi he published an epic poem Marusthal.
Meanwhile he also wrote plays for the radio and stage alike. His three Urdu plays were selected for the national broadcast. He was also actively associated with theatre in the form of writer and director.
In the field of prose he slowly graduated from the small format of story to the wider canvas of Novel. He started off with Treh Samudar di. This novel has now been translated into Hindi under the title of Prakash ki ore by one of Sarathi’s disciple Suraj Rattan. His master piece in Novel was Nanga Rukh published in 1978. For its unconventional exposition of a series of situation that provoke doubts about contemporary reality and values Nanga rukh in Dogri was rewarded with Sahitya Academy award in 1979. Such a soul stirring novel it is in the contemporary Indian Literature that it has been translated in almost all Indian languages. His third in the series Resham de Keeray won him the J&K Academy Award for 1980-81 which was again repeated in 1984-85 for his fourth novel Pather te rang. His two novels in Punjabi Bin paran de Dharti and Rankhetra were higly appreciated Rankhetra was prescribed for the degree course in Guru Nanak Dev University.

सारथी कला निकेतन Sarathi Kala Niketan

सारथी कला निकेतन (सकलानि)

Wednesday, 7 March 2012

an oil painting by Gurudev Sarathi ji

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