Description :
Badri Narayan(1929-2013) was an eminent artist, illustrator, author and story-teller. He started painting with no formal training, and his first public showing was in 1949, followed by a solo show in 1954. In the years since, he has had over 50 solo shows and his work is in several collections, including the National Gallery of Modern Art and the National Musuem in New Delhi.His paintings are intimate and appealing, often with an element of fantasy, with simple outlines and accessible subject matter in two-dimensional stylized representations. He also illustrated children's books and wrote short stories and verse. He has been the subject of a documentary by Mumbai All India Radio, and has received numerous awards, including the Padma Shri in 1987 and the Maharashtra Gourav Puruskar in 1990.
Vitrum Studio, established in 1954 at Rutton Villa, Cumballa Hill, Bombay, emerged as a pioneering space for ceramic experimentation and artistic collaboration in post-independence India. Founded by Polish settlers Simon Lifschutz and his partner Hanna, the studio was the charitable wing of Lifschutz’s glass factory in Vikhroli, which produced pharmaceutical and cosmetic packaging. At a time when India was embracing industrial growth and cultural expansion, Vitrum offered a unique confluence of material innovation and artistic freedom.
Over its two-decade existence, Vitrum engaged more than 30 artists—many affiliated with the Sir J.J. School of Art—who explored ceramics as a painterly and sculptural medium. Artists such as Badri Narayan, S.A.M. Kazi, Vijoo Sadwelkar, and Anjali Dasgupta created evocative works using specially procured ceramic pigments and glazes, often transforming tiles and plates into canvases for abstraction, figuration, and landscape.
After the Lifschutzs relocated to the UK in the mid-1960s, the studio was renamed HexAmar under Capt. Nagindas Shah and continued until 1974, marking the end of an era and a shift in the structures of artistic production and valuation.