Sohan Qadri
(1932 – 2011)

Sohan Qadri was born in 1932, Punjab, India. He received his master’s degree from the Government College of Art in Simla.

His work is a combination of spirituality and artistic sense, which together invokes a vision of meditative moments with vibrant motifs in the paintings. Qadri quite often avoided conventional paint mediums, and he is known for creating ink and dye works on paper that evoke a sense in rich colors.

He was introduced to yogic practices at the young age of seven and his early years were spent in India. Qadri’s paintings are a hybrid marriage of Tantric imagery and late minimalism. Which earned him the title of “Tantric Yogi Artist” from Francis Newton Souza, who was one of the India’s leading Modernist Artist.

Qadri began his career in the 1950s with painting in oils on canvas. Later, he worked on paper exclusively from the 1980s. In this technical process, he covered the surface of the paper with structural effects by soaking it in liquid and carving it in several stages; while applying inks and dyes. Where the striated two-dimensional paper was ultimately transformed into a three-dimensional medium; with repetitions and careful incisions on the paper, representing process of meditation.

His works have been included in numerous collections, including those of the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts; the Rubin Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; as well as the private collections of Cirque du Soleil, Heinrich Böll and Dr. Robert Thurman.