Mar 9, 2009


Jitish Kallat



Jitish Kallat is one of those artists in India who had replaced traditional paintings and sculptures by machine-based images and assemblages to the centre of fine art practice.

In most of the works, Jitish Kallat makes a copy of a photograph (sometimes his own) with the help of low end machines like fax, photocopier, etc and on this image, Kallat then applies paint, etc to create the final image, which looks like graffiti, or pop art. The graffiti type works allows Kallat to make statements on current issues like in political posters. Thus with his art works Kallat along with his contemporaries had paved the way for more sophisticated technical works which are in fashion in India today.




Kallat though initially started as a painter and collagist, later made installations too. While his two dimensional works look like Graffiti, his installations are based mostly on the skeleton motif. Skeletons of automobiles, and inanimate objects are hallmarks of Kallat.

Death, violence, religious intolerance come recurrently in his works, which make his works very contemporary.


Fibre Glass Sculpture


Kallat is one of the most commercially successful artists of India. He had exhibited in many countries in Europe and is one of the youngest among India’s new generation of visual artists.