Based in Chennai, the Kerala-born painter was a significant force in India’s contemporary abstract art movement, and also a quiet mentor to many.

For Achuthan Kudallur, painting was not a dialogue or conversation, but a communion with colour and sometimes, even a battle. From his early expressionist journeys he comes to this tranquil sense of joy in light and colour, of which one can see traces in his later abstract work – a better medium for self-expression to him. Kudallur was a formidable figure in the contemporary abstract art movement and highly revered in contemporary art circles in South India. His canvases throb and are alive with the joyous, riotous spreads of colour, at times melancholic, even tragic.

Born in 1945 in Kudallur village in Kerala, his work was deeply influenced by idyllic scenes from his childhood involving beaches, rivers, temple evenings and other bits from that childhood remembered. A civil engineer by training, Kudallur joined evening classes at the Madras Art Club in the Government College of Fine Arts.

Artist R B Bhaskaran, former chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi and former principal of the Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai and Government College of Arts, Kumbakonam, who knew Kudallur as a student, an artist and a friend said, “I took still life classes at the Madras Art Club and from the time I saw his first abstraction, I told him he has talent,” adding that the painter, who was working at the Public Works Department in Chepauk, wanted to become a writer at that point, and was already being published in Malayalam. “He is a very good colourist,” said Bhaskaran, adding that Kudallur’s strength was balancing colour with light.

Kudallur’s is a multifaceted oeuvre, where the colours he worked with changed with his moods and the work itself became a balancing act between the nonchalant, composed and the uproarious.

The artist has been part of several exhibitions in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, France and Czechoslovakia. His works were shown at the Bhopal Biennale in 1991 and 1998, he participated in the VIIth Triennial in Delhi in 1991 and the 3rd Asian Art show at Fukuoka, Japan and he has been part of a group show at Delfina Gallery, London. He has won multiple awards, including the Tamil Nadu Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1982 and the National Academy Award in 1988.

The artist passed away in Chennai, India in July 2022.