Exhibition at Galerie AB - AKKITHAM

Akkitham Exhibition

This event is doubly unique. On one hand, it highlights a major painter in India – a three-time winner of the country's highest official honor – who remains too little-known on the French scene, despite living and working in Paris for over half a century. On the other hand, it comes at a time when European collectors are showing increasing interest in modern and contemporary Indian art, driven by the emergence of a wealthy middle class and the international opening of Indian institutions.

The exhibition brings together about thirty oils on canvas covering several decades of creation. It offers visitors the opportunity to discover a body of work that is fully in line with 20th-century Western geometric abstraction, while drawing on India's symbolic and ritual traditions. An approach that makes Akkitham a unique case: an artist who has built a personal visual language at the crossroads of two worlds.

For both collectors and art lovers, this exhibition is a rare opportunity to see a significant collection of works by a painter whose market value, still moderate in Europe, is poised to follow the momentum of the Indian market. It is also a concrete entry into a broader subject: how is Indian art becoming internationalized? How do its major artists position themselves between heritage and modernity? And how does Paris, where Narayanan Akkitham has resided since 1967, remain a hub for this dialogue?

Who is Narayanan Akkitham?

Born in Kerala in 1939, Narayanan Akkitham was trained at the Government School of Arts and Crafts in Chennai, where he studied under K. C. S. Paniker and D. P. Roy Choudhury. In 1967, a French government scholarship allowed him to join Paris. He then entered the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Jean Bertholle's studio.

After a figurative period, Akkitham moved toward a personal geometric abstraction in the late 1960s.

His work never falls into decorative formalism: it constitutes a true meditation on the invisible structures of the world. Triangles, circles, squares, lines, and calligraphic signs become the elements of a visual vocabulary inspired by Indian cosmologies, Tantric diagrams, Vedic thought, and the mural painting traditions of ancient India.

Geometry appears as a universal script, capable of translating the relationships between matter, energy, and spirituality. Color plays an essential role in this inner quest. Superimposed in subtle veils, the tones seem to radiate from the surface of the painting rather than being applied to it.

Narayanan Akkitham has built a body of work that travels continuously between India and France.

He has exhibited numerous times in India, where he enjoys top-tier institutional recognition, while being regularly shown in France, Japan, Germany, and Poland. His paintings have entered major public collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the French Ministry of Culture, and the National Museum in New Delhi. This dual presence, both European and Indian, is also marked by several awards. He has received the Lalit Kala Akademi Award three times (1963, 1965, 1966), the highest official honor awarded to an artist in India, as well as the K. C. S. Paniker Puraskaram and the Raja Ravi Varma Award, which confirm the lasting place of his work in the history of contemporary Indian art.

Narayanan Akkitham in public collections

• National Museum, New Delhi, India

• National Art Gallery, Chennai, India

• Ahmedabad Museum, India

• Bangalore Museum, India

• Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Paris, France

• National Library of France

• Paris Prefecture, France

• Hyacinthe-Rigaud Museum, Perpignan, France

• Wilhelmshaven Museum, Germany

• Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan

• Asia and Pacific Museum, Warsaw, Poland

• Museum of Sacred Art (MOSA), Durbuy, Belgium