India Art Festival returns after two years

Art lovers in the national capital can head to the Constitutional Club of India, just off the Parliament, to savour over 3500 creations that have been brought together as part of the India Art Festival that opened on April 7 and will continue until April 10.

Billed as the largest art festival in the country, the India Art Festival has come back after a break of two years forced by the Covid-19 pandemic and the presence of over 450 artists at the show is a sign of how badly the festival had been missed by artists and art lovers from all over India.

India Art Festival has been held annually for 12 years and every year there has been an edition in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore. But in the past two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, all the exhibitions had to be closed including the art gallery too. This had caused lots of losses to several artists for whom the art festival is not only a place to showcase their art, but also to find buyers for their creations.

“So the maximum loss has happened here, and the people of art have suffered, since for many artists their incomes come from the sale of paintings. It must have been difficult. After two years, the pandemic has finally come under control, so we have brought the art festival back,” Rajendra Patil, director of India Art Festival tells Media India Group.

For a long time, the artists as well as numerous art lovers had been waiting for the exhibition and art galleries to reopen. Hence, when the pandemic was seen to have been brought under control, notably with the end of the third wave, the work on resumption of India Art Festival began again and Patil says the idea of bringing it back received received very good response from the artists.

The exhibition features 85 stalls, 450 artists, and 3500 displays of art works. The art works displayed at the festival include paintings, sculptures, photographs, and ceramics, portraying landscapes, seascapes, abstract art as well as figurative arts.

Many artists from different parts of the country have gathered at the Constitutional Club for the festival. These include creators from Jammu, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and several North Eastern states.

Patil says that in the pre-pandemic period, the festival normally recorded over 26,000 visitors, including many collectors and buyers, making the festival successful for the artists through hectic sale of their art works. Patil hopes that the buyers would also return to the festival as eagerly as the artists have, given the two-year drought in the market.

On April 7 and 8, though the number of visitors was good, Patil says it was still far from the numbers that used to visit the festival before the pandemic. The exact number of visitors and buyers would only be known once the festival concludes on Sunday, but Patil and other artists are hoping that the return of the festival would mean a return to normalcy for the art world which has been severely disrupted for most of them.