“Their [his subjects’] momentary actions usually give me the purest display of emotion possible, especially when they are alone”
– Raghav Babbar
What draws you into a Raghav Babbar painting is not just the minute detailing in the painting, it is also the fact that the artist treats all of his subjects like the members of his family. In an interview with Artsy, Babbar confessed, “It’s a great experience when I get to have someone sit in front of me, as I get to know who they are very intimately”. Knowing their muses on a personal level is a famously followed ritual by artists of any background be it film directors and their actors or painters and their subjects. This particular feature in artworks by Babbar brings an inherent familiarity to not just the art itself but also the subject. The audience upon viewing his art gains an acquaintanceship with the subject. So when you gaze at his painting you’re not just watching an older woman looking down at her hands, you’re watching Dai Ma – a person the artist grew up with. Adorned with her ash grey hair, and wrinkles in her nurturing hands that exude wisdom, love and care.
Born in Rohtak, Babbar, completed his Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the Lasalle College of Art in Singapore and later on his MFA from the Royal College of Art in London. In an age of low attention span and 15-second videos, the ’97-born young artist is known for his patience and attention to tedious details. All of his portraits tell a story and are usually characterized by thinly distributed backgrounds and multilayered paint that can take up to 2 weeks to completely dry down naturally. As the figurative artist tells Artsy, “Everything in my work is about time, Nothing works without patience in my practice, since the thick layers of paint that I apply take weeks to dry. In taking my time, I allow the painting to naturally grow and evolve on its own.”
In June of this year, Babbar debuted his solo exhibition at Nahmad Projects – a gallery in London. The exhibition titled “New Paintings” features portraits of people from multi-faceted backgrounds be it family members, characters from movie stills, or friends and acquaintances. The opening weekend of the show attracted above 400 visitors and sold up to 200,000 Euros according to Nahmad Projects. This range of selling price is not foreign to the artist as his 2020 work, The Coal Seller sold for 609,600 Euros and a 2021 art piece titled Warden sold for 165,100 USD.
Presently the 20-something artist resides in London, hoping to showcase the beauty of his home country, India. He aims to encourage people to visit the nation and bring to the forefront his style of blending India’s varied heritage in his artistic expression whilst also inspiring other artists.
References:
- Artsy: How Raghav Babbar’s Pensive Portraits Have Captured Collectors’ Attention
- Raghav Babbar.com
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Isamu Noguchi: An Abstract Sculptor Who Blended East and West
Vaishnavi Srivastava is a learning writer, a keen researcher and a literature enthusiast. She is a Sub-editor at Abir Pothi.
