Chhaganlal Patel was born on 21 January 1929 in Surat (Gujarat) in India. He studied at the Sir J J School of Art in Bombay where he obtained his Diploma and Masters qualifications in fine art in 1956. In India, he worked as an art instructor in higher secondary education for ten years. This exhibition, which runs at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan from 21 - 26 May, represents his twelfth one man show in recent years.

He also worked and studied at the Banasthali College near Jaipur in Rajasthan. At the college he studied and specialised in Indian mural paintings. His mural work in the 'Jaipur Fresco' and 'Ajanta Fresco' is still displayed at the Banasthali College. In 1986, he was commissioned to paint 12 large murals depicting the life of Lord Krishna for a newly built temple near Surat. In 1961 he came to England to work and has exhibited his paintings at numerous art exhibitions in the Greater London Area.

Chhaganlal Patel is an artist poised between East and West: two continents with two distinct artistic traditions but which also have many similarities and correspondences. His origins in the Gujarat region of India with its stylised imagery and colouring has combined with the Western Modernist tradition of cubism and Abstraction to produce work which offers tantalising glimpses of both cultures. He has successfully combined these diverse practices, making art that is neither completely Eastern or Western, although to call it a hybrid of both cultures fails to recognise the integrity and completeness of the work.

The use of acrylics with their strong vibrant colours give his traditional Hindu Indian imagery an immediacy and directness which combined with the use of a palette knife gives a distinctive appearance and texture to his paintings. Together with colours that juxtapose warm orange, browns and ochre with pale blues and greens give this larger work a cohesive and subtle resonance. An example of this is Siesta, which depicts a sleeping young woman watched over and protected by a young man, perhaps her husband. The device of the foreground plant pointing towards the sleeping figure and her male companion draws the eye into the picture. The two figures in the acrylic and semi-abstract setting with dynamic diagonals and verticals are a harmonious blend of balancing elements.

A recent series of large, highly detailed pen and ink drawings on paper of the Hindu God Ganesh offer another aspect of the artist and his exceptional drawing abilities. Perhaps his most European influenced work are his landscapes, village scenes and flower paintings delicately executed in watercolour, which owe much to the understated British tradition in this media.

Chhaganlal Patel is an artist who testifies to the fact that you cannot live in a culture without absorbing, perhaps unconsciously, many of its influences and attitudes. Although his work is predominantly Eastern in much of its subject matter and style, the diversity of his output references many elements of the European artistic movements of the twentieth century.

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