University at Buffalo (UB)
Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself
Courtesy of the artist and DAG. Photo: Janet Bhavsar.
Presented jointly with the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself surveys fifty years of the artist’s expressive abstractions, inviting viewers to meditate on the power of pure color.
Bhavsar: Free Yourself is a two-part exhibition surveying fifty years of the artist’s expressive abstractions and inviting viewers to meditate on the power of pure color. Simultaneously presented at UB Anderson Gallery and in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s M&T Bank Gallery (August 21, 2026–April 4, 2027), the exhibition features monumental paintings spanning each decade of the artist’s career.
Bhavsar’s unique physical process centers on tiny particles of pure, dry pigment. He begins by soaking the entire canvas in a clear acrylic binder, then sifts or brushes pigment through handmade tools and fine mesh screens, building up to eighty sealed layers. Air currents, breath, and the rhythm of his body as he maneuvers around the surface help shape the final image—a carefully controlled dance that produces textured, smoky surfaces with subtle shifts in color and tone. As Bhavsar describes: “When I enter my studio, everything disappears. It’s like I’ve entered another world. I experience Nirvana. It’s an incredible gift in which I disappear, the studio itself disappears, New York disappears.”
Examined up close, his dappled surfaces are palpable; from a distance, the color fields float and become atmospheric. Some paintings burst with energy, while others suggest a boundless continuum of color. Unlike other Abstract Expressionists, who approached the sublime through solemnity, Bhavsar’s path is ecstatic and celebratory and rooted in his Indian heritage. His work invokes Holi, the Hindu Spring festival in which revelers douse one another in powdered colors to celebrate the divine love of Radha and Krishna. Later works introducing curlicues draw on rangoli—decorative floor patterns of colored powder made during Diwali, the festival of light. Bhavsar’s meditative practice results in an intensely personal experience that invites endless free association—whether you find yourself peering through a microscope, wandering a Holi celebration, or gazing from the Hubble telescope is left entirely to you.
Natvar Bhavsar was born and educated in Gujarat, India, where color was ubiquitous. As a child, his palms and soles were painted with Kumkum, a vermillion powder used to ward off evil. As Bhavsar explains, “art requires a sense of color. Just like music is about sound – its presence or absence – so art is about color. I wanted to show the world the color of the red bindi, the particular vermillion, that color, and how to paint it on canvas, how to look at it and understand it.”
Born into a family of textile printers, he grew up surrounded by vats of vivid pigment and colorful fabrics laid to dry across several acres. A childhood memory of dust dancing in shafts of sunlight became a touchstone of his career. The titles of his works often stem from Sanskrit words for natural phenomena or Hindu cosmology, underscoring the sacred and cosmological dimensions at play.
Bhavsar relocated to the United States in June 1962, receiving his schooling in Philadelphia. One of his teachers, Piero Dorazio, introduced him to the leading figures at the height of Abstract Expressionism. These artists encouraged the young artist to explore radical possibilities within abstraction. Bhavsar settled in SoHo, New York, where he still resides today.
Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself is organized by University at Buffalo Art Galleries and the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. This presentation at UB Art Galleries is curated by Robert Scalise, Director, UB Art Galleries, and its presentation at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum is curated by Katie O’Hara, Assistant Curator, Buffalo AKG Art Museum.
DAG is the presenting sponsor of Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself. Additional support is provided by Ashok G. Kaveeshwar PhD and Hariastuti Kaveeshwar. Special thanks to President Emeritus and University Professor Satish K. Tripathi for supporting this exhibition through the President’s Fund for Excellence. Sincere thanks to UB alumni Rebecca Costanzo, M.A., whose instrumental efforts helped bring Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself to the Western New York Community.