Painter, philosopher and art collector Acharya Vyakul was born in Rajasthan/ India in 1930. Since 1959 he has lived and worked in Jaipur, where he founded the largest private museum for Indian art and culture in India, the S.R.C. Museum of Indology. After major solo exhibitions in London, Amsterdam and Paris, the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen is presenting works by Acharya Vyakul from recent years for the first time in Germany.
About 50 gouaches are on display at the ifa Gallery Friedrichstraße in an exhibition titled “Thoughts in Colours and Lines”. The drawings are small,rarely exceeding than 30 x 20 cm. The paintings have a strong materiality and also show traces of use and storage. The artist prepares the colours himself according to ancient tantric instructions.
His drawings are rooted in the meditative experience of the unity between man and cosmic forces. They are anchored in Indian culture and in the tradition of tantric philosophy and imagery, the deeper layers of which are difficult for us to understand. However, Vyakul’s drawings can also be read as purely existential expressions. They speak a language that can be intuitively grasped, even without a background in another cultural sphere, and that functions independently of rational insights.