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Ved Nayar Biography | Life, artworks

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Ved Nayar (b.1933) With the spread of installation art in the 1990s, there has been the development of a certain ...

Ved Nayar Biography
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Ved Nayar (b.1933)

With the spread of installation art in the 1990s, there has been the development of a certain architecturalizing of sculpture. 

What ensured a sculpture its distinctive character was the ‘pedestal which earlier was often designed by the architects’. And during the 1960s when the pedestal was deliberately removed to let the sculpture step down on to the earth, it was again architecture that provided the boundary, such as ‘the room’ or ‘the courtyard’. 


In installation, the surroundings are everything; for the value of objects used in the installation lies in how they interrelate, and contribute to the representation of space. 

Painting By Ved Nayar
Painting By Ved Nayar
Ved Nayar- Untitled
year-2000
size- 30.0 x 22.0 in. / 76.2 x 55.9 cm.
medium-Gouache on paper

Ved Nayar has long critiqued society’s obsession with consumerism—leading a life beyond one’s means allegedly made simpler by the credit card companies that lure us into bringing into our lives things that we ‘want’ and not necessarily ‘need’ or, for that matter, companies that entice us to improve our lifestyles, travel, pose and show lives that are not necessarily ‘real’. Nayar creates here a central figure that seems to be in a trance even as its life, literally, seems plastered with the logos of brands clamouring for attention.

Ved Nayar is a sculptor whose work has stepped down from the pedestal with a positive result physically subtle and with the potential to affect the viewer subliminally. 

The viewer, as it were, comes to know the work subconsciously. His work is an act of inquiry. 

He has raised questions about context and revealed how meaningful an element it is in art. He, however, never loses sight of the relationship between material and volume. 

Painting By Ved Nayar
Painting By Ved Nayar
Ved Nayar-Untitled
year-2002
size-51.2 x 27.2 in. / 130.0 x 69.1 cm.
medium-Gouache on handmade paper

Ved Nayar’s art discusses the adverse effect of consumerism in our world and how it affects people. The elongated limbs of his figures imply they are far removed from realising the devastation they cause. What seem like corn plants on either side of the figure in this Untitled painting are sadly parking lots for toy-like vehicles, thus, pointing to the damage done to the environment. The artist urges us to peer into the painting and subsequently pause to see the results of our shoddy actions.

He attempts to build up new relations out of the elements at hand, believing that it is the right of the artist to select and reject elements. 

Ved Nayar‘s installations, such as Mankind 2192—Despair and Hope of Kalpavriksha, The Gods and Man ‘s offerings in Plastic and Immortality of the Man, the Bird, the Tree, and the Flower as Trophies, have according to him, evolved from his creative concerns. 

These have turned to be strong statements on the environment and fulfilment of man’s life. As he says, ‘In our mythology, the Kalpavriksha is a heavenly tree which fulfills all the needs and desires of Man and guides him to enlightenment.’

Read More:


Somnath Hore, Dhan Raj Bhagat, Ramkinkar Vaij, Arpana Caur, Jai Zharotia, Gogi Saroj Pal, Vivan Sundaram, Manjit Bawa, Jatin Das, Biren De, Gulam Mohammad Sheikh, Arpita Singh, A Ramachandran, Om Prakash, Shanti Dave, Bishamber Khanna, Jagdish Swaminathan, Anjolie Ela Menon, Satish Gujral, G.R. Santosh

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