Shuvaprasanna captures the faces of Mahabharata in a Chennai exhibition, New York restitutes stolen antiques to Italy, and two more stories from the Art world

Shuvaprasanna captures the faces of Mahabharata in a Chennai exhibition

Kolkata-based artist Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharjee explores his fascination with the epic Mahabharata through his latest series of works, Faces: A Race from Epic, that are now displayed at Sarala’s Art World in Chennai. Born in Kolkata in 1947, he graduated from the Indian College of Arts (Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata) in 1969. He was an active member of the \’Calcutta Painters\’ group. The City of Joy has been a prominent muse for the artist till date. According to Shuvaprasanna, art has no meaning and yet is full of meaning. Even in abstraction, there is meaning. This series, he feels, embodies this statement. “When you start working, you don’t really know what will come out. But after finishing a work, you will get some sort of sensibility which makes you continue.” Read the entire story on The Hindu. 

New York restitutes stolen antiques to Italy

New York officials have returned stolen antiquities worth nearly $14 million to Italy, including dozens of artifacts seized from US billionaire Michael Steinhardt. Over a third of the 142 items handed back at a ceremony Wednesday had previously belonged to the former hedge fund manager, who was once among the world\’s most prominent collectors of ancient art, according to the Manhattan District Attorney\’s office. Among the repatriated artifacts was a 2,000-year-old fresco depicting a young Hercules strangling a snake. Worth an estimated $1 million, it was looted from an archaeological site near Italy\’s Mount Vesuvius in 1995. Read more on CNN. 

Perry Rubenstein, art dealer who faced grand theft charges, dead at 68

Perry Rubenstein, a dealer with deep social connections in New York and Los Angeles whose career was brought to a halt by a grand theft conviction, has died at 68. His ex-wife, PR executive Sara Fitzmaurice, confirmed Rubenstein’s passing and said he died of natural causes. Prior to spending six months in jail several years ago, Rubenstein had been esteemed in the New York and L.A. scenes, thanks to his eponymous gallery, which filed for bankruptcy in 2014. Having initially opened on Prince Street in SoHo in 1989, Rubenstein inaugurated two spaces in Chelsea in 2004, and then relocated his entire operation to Los Angeles in 2011, at a time when few New York galleries had done so. Owing to his grand theft charge, the gallery never reopened. Read the entire story on ARTnews. 

Guggenheim painter accused of ripping off black artist, admits ‘mistake’

Spanish artist Gala Knörr was eager to announce the news. Her Young Cowboy paintings would be on display at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao from July 8 until September 13. But just days after the exhibit opened, Knörr admitted to Rolling Stone that she made “a mistake” in failing to credit a more direct inspiration — Black Brooklyn-based artist dayday, whose work in Hulu’s Your Attention Please is nearly identical to her paintings that now hang on the walls of the Guggenheim Bilbao. In a statement to Rolling Stone, the museum confirmed that Knörr did not adequately credit the original work and had come to the “reparative solution” to have dayday’s work displayed alongside Knörr’s paintings. (Through a representative, dayday declined to comment further.) Read the entire story on Rolling Stone.