NATVAR BHAVSAR | Untitled

Private Collection of Zoe and Harrison Levy, Phoenix 
Acquired from the above in 2013 Renowned art patrons, Zoe and Harrison Levy were founding members of the Friends of Mexican Art (FOMA) in Phoenix. Because of their love for Mexican art, in 1963, they set up this non-profit organization to make Phoenix a center for Mexican art. At the time there had never been a major Mexican art exhibit in the U.S. FOMA changed that. Soon it was a large and thriving group. FOMA not only publicized Mexican artists but also purchased art by Mexican artists and donated them to the Phoenix Art Museum. By 1994 FOMA had purchased around 300 pieces of Mexican art for the Phoenix Art Museum. The Levy Family collected art across the board. 

Very minor surface accretions and a few scuff marks are visible upon close scrutiny. Small spots of black paint appear inherent. This painting is in very good overall condition, as viewed.
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Natvar Bhavsar is an Indian artist based in New York. He grew up surrounded by vats of color, having been raised in a family of printers. He is able to create fields of variegated fluid and dense color which migrate across the picture plane, reminiscent of bright hues seen in his youth. Bhavsar moved to the United States in 1962 to study fine art at the University of Pennsylvania. Louis Kahn, Otto Piene and Professor Piero Dorazio  were some of the luminaries that led the art school at the time. It was Dorazio who introduced Bhavsar to Mark Rothko, Clement Greenberg, Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman, resulting in his exposure to color field paintings and his abstract compositions. This current painting is from a very nascent period of Bhavsar’s artistic output and was created whilst he was still studying.  These early works are characterized by more defined geometric shapes rendered with bright, stark pigments. Here, the influences of color and geometric form are truly apparent. “You know I was born and color was placed on my palm, it’s traditional. So this tradition of being blessed with color in the palm might have helped me. I came to New York and I looked at Mark Rothko’s work, which was a major inspiration, but I noticed there was a fairly limited palette. They were quite saturated with the density of color. But when I expressed the rangoli, there were thousands of varied densities.” ('Abeed Hossain in conversation with Natvar Bhavsar,' The Metaphysics of Expression: A Conversation with Natvar Bhavsar, March 21 2012, South Asia Journal, http://southasiajournal.net/the-metaphysics-of-expression-a-conversation-with-natvar-bhavsar/)