CERAMIC ART CENTER AT BHARAT BHAWAN, BHOPAL

The grand master of Cinema AndreyTarkovsky has said that Time always settles like rust (saba) on the objects and the art objects exist as products of sculpting in time. The same is true for ceramic art. T.S. Eliot in his famous essay also talks about tradition, " Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited and if you want,you must obtain it by great labour."

Way back in February 1982 at Bhopal, the importance of curating a permanent collection of ceramic art was felt by the founder Director of Roopankar, late Shri J. Swaminathan, the renowned painter. He emphasized that urban and rural artists need not be segregated in the light of new technological advancement. The indigenous knowledge system which traditional artist use in their creativity and their vast experience which goes with them to be augmented with modern technology to explore the unlimited possibilities of clay medium itself.

Today the ceramic art center Roopankar at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal is well known prestigious center and known as Bhopal school which provides openness to the artists to perfect their forms with simplicity, spontaneity, intended distortions and minimalism in unsturctured manner. It is fulfilling the dream of Shri J. Swaminathan who has written in its first catalogue "perceiving fingers" that " the notion of timelessness in art is and has to be accepted for how can we otherwise be able to respond to the art of the past? The past lives with us as other presences, it vanquishes time."