Avtarjeet dhanjal biography of mahatma
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Dialogue, St. Petersburg, Russia.
2000 ‘Autumn Saloon’, Palace, Krakov, Poland. 24
At the beginning of the 1990s, Dhanjal went to south India to study temple sculpture and, in 1991, began a complex commission for the Cardiff Bay Development Trust, a sculptural interpretation of The I Ching [Book of Changes].
The exhibition was described as bringing together ‘the work of AfroAsian Artists in Britain’, as Araeen preferred this term over ‘Black’ (Chambers, 2014). The General Post Office, UK has published a commemorative stamp celebrating Avtarjeet Dhanjal’s 50 years of creativity in 2015.
Dhanjal’s artworks, writings, installations and performances are imbibed with the spirit of Indian values with the essence of village life taking their expression in the set standards of Western artistic mode.
From 1958–65, Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal worked as vehicle body – builder, then sign-painter, both locally and in Delhi. Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal did his graduation from Government College of Art, Chandigarh in Sculpture, in 1965–1970. Other public commissions using abstract forms and drawing on nature followed, notably at the National Garden Festival, Stoke on Trent (1986), Wolverhampton (1986) and Birmingham (1989) (Donnell, 2002).
Alongside public commissions, Dhanjal was also involved in many London exhibitions over the next two decades.
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The work he produced during the project was also shown at Dudley Castle in 1975 (Buckman, 2006). Apr–May, ‘Their Culture’, Rundetaarn, Copenhagen, Denmark.
2006 Kala Maitri, The Museum of Fine Arts, Chadigarh, India.
2005 ‘3 in1’, OR Gallery, – Malmö, Sweden.
2003 The Gallery, Bristol, England (The Edward Wilmot Blyden Project).
Dhanjal, 28 May – 27 June
1983 Exhibition at Springe Museum, Germany; created 83 Steps at Margam Park, South Wales
1985 Installed 15 Floating Flames and Peace Maker at the St. Louis Arts Festival, USA
1986 Public sculpture Dunstall Henge at Peace Green, Wolverhampton
1987 Exhibited at Horizon Gallery, London; participated in Kaleidoscope Group Show
1989-1990 Participated in The Other Story exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London; created a public sculpture for Senneleys Park, Birmingham
1990 Installed Five Thousand Candles for Justice at Parque Ibirapuera, São Paulo, Brazil
1991 Created an environmental sculpture for Chandigarh, India; participated in The South of the World exhibition in Marsala, Sicily
1992-1996 Lead sculptor for Maltings Park, Cardiff Bay Development Corporation
1996 Commissioned for a sculpture at Cartwright Hall, Bradford
1997 Solo exhibition at Pitshanger Manor and Gallery, London
Developed a master plan for Farm Park in Birmingham (not materialised)
Commissioned for Swan Bank, Coventry Canal, and Emslie Horniman Pleasance, London
1999 Invited to exhibit at Palais des Nations, Geneva; commissioned for Thorpe Meadow Millennium Youth Hostel, Peterborough (not materialised)
2002 Exhibited alongside Eugene Palmer at 4 Victoria Street, Bristol
2009 Delivered a lecture titled "Beyond the Object" at Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi,
2013 Solo exhibition Beyond the Object at Hayward Gardens Gallery, Cardiff; installation Space Below at the National University of Belarus, Minsk
2015 Exhibited Power of Silence: Photographs & Drawings at Diversity Gallery, Cardiff
Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal
He was born on 10 April 1940 in a small village, Dalla, in Ludhiana, Punjab, India to a craftsman, where folk arts, crafts and folk poetry were part of daily life without calling them “Art”.
After graduating high school in 1956, he worked as a carpenter, sign-writer, before joining the Arts School at Chandigarh.
His Slate works finds evocative of the depth of darkness of the night in the rural Punjab.
Therefore, Dhanjal is one artist, who has produced extraordinary work of international quality for an artist to be in the centre stage. The exhibition included abstract works made since the 1980s in slate, a material that Dhanjal finds evocative of the depth of darkness of the night in rural Punjab (Donnell, 2002).
Avtarjeet Singh Dhanjal lives and works in Shropshire, where he has supported the visual arts and encourages cultural links between Asia and Britain.
He incorporates various elements in his installations like stones devoid of all human intervention save the little niches carved out to inculcate other elements like water and fire. Two years later, Dhanjal was included in Araeen’s more monumental exhibition at Hayward Gallery, The Other Story: Afro-Asian Artists in Post-War Britain (1989–90), which ‘featured a broad range of artists from different ethnic backgrounds (excluding white) whose practices ranged from the explicitly political through to the esoteric, from the highly figurative to the abstract and formalist’.
His first wood carvings were immediately (1966) purchased by the Chandigarh Museum and encouraged him to venture into large works in various mediums.
Again in 1968 his large sculpture about space travel was revealed immediately after the launch of Apollo 8.
During the 1980s Dhanjal received commissions for a number of major public art projects in Britain, India, Brazil and the US. At the beginning of 1990s, Dhanjal went to study temple sculpture and, in 1991, started a complex commission for the Cardiff Bay Development Trust, a sculptural interpretation of The I Ching, the Book of Changes.
He lived in London for 12 years before moving to Ironbridge in 1987, where he still lives and works.
In 1945–55, he did his schooling from Government School, Mallah, Panjab.
I am using the same intuition that was used by Democritus and Anaxagoras to postulate their theory of nuclear structure.
2015 Apr–May, 'Power of Silence'-Exhibition of Photographs and Drawings at Diversity Gallery, Butetown History & Arts Centre, UK 2007 Feb–Mar, ‘Third Culture’, Kaapeli, Helsinki, Finland.