Nitin Dadrawala
is a typical product of the vital new forces that are emerging in contemporary Indian Art. During the first half of the 20th Century established academic art inevitably receded into the background. Independence of the country automatically fortified new modernistic influences. These have continued to shape the work of the generations that followed. Dadrawala belongs to the latest of these. His paintings can be easily labeled “abstract expressionist.” But we must go beyond what are now textbook terms and search for the deeper urges that characterize the painter.
The first task for even the most innovative painter is to break out of the mould of traditional academic education. Dadrawala accomplished this early in his career. In 1994, the reputed “Gallery Schoo” in Amsterdam, a path-breaking organization of the Foundation for Indian Artists, honoured him with a one-man show. Simultaneously the Indian Council for Cultural Relations gave him a traveling scholarship to attend this event. He is also awarded Senior Fellowship in the field of Visual Art, from Dept. of Culture – Govt. of India in 1998/99.
Progressing through more than 15 appearances – solo and group – in Mumbai, Madras, Hong Kong, Bhopal and New Delhi, Dadrawala has never looked back. Above all, he has remained his own independent self unaffected by the confusion that an excess of‘modernism’ can create. Over the years his approach to abstraction, to form and colour, has consistently undergone subtle and dynamic changes. Logically, his art raises great expectations.
– Dnyaneshwar Nadkarni, Art Critic