ARTIST PROFILE · SARASWATI FOUNDATION COLLECTION
Jyoti Bhatt
Painter, printmaker and photographer whose modernist image-making drew on the visual language of India’s folk and craft traditions.
RECOGNITION
Awards & Honours
- Padma Shri, Government of India, 2019
- Grand Prix, 13th Annual Photo Contest for Asia and the Pacific, UNESCO, Japan, 1989
- Lifetime Achievement Award (Distinguished Photo Artist), Academy of Visual Media, New Delhi, 2005
- Gold Medal, International Print Biennale, Florence, 1967
THE ARTIST
Biography
Jyoti Bhatt (born 1934 in Bhavnagar, Gujarat) is an Indian painter, printmaker and photographer. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, from 1950 to 1956, and later pursued printmaking at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples and the Pratt Institute and Pratt Graphic Art Center in New York.
After returning to Vadodara, Bhatt taught at the university and developed a sustained photographic practice documenting the changing craft, design and folk traditions of Gujarat. His paintings and prints combine modernist composition with motifs and patterns drawn from folk and tribal visual culture. He lives and works in Vadodara.
Exhibitions & Residencies
Painters with a Camera, organised by Bhatt, 1969
Printed Image: An Overview Retrospective Exhibition of Graphic Prints 1961–98, Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai, 1998
Parallels That Meet: Paintings, Prints, Photographs, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2007
More than 25 solo exhibitions in India and internationally, per JNAF
Selected Works
Works below are verified in the Saraswati Foundation collection catalogue.