Sangeeta Reddy

Place: Hyderabad

Born: 1955

Biography:

Born in 1955, in Hyderabad, India, painter and writer Sangeeta Reddy migrated to the United States in 1978 and currently lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Reddy studied English literature and philosophy at the University of Mumbai, India and seven years of undergraduate art between JNTU Hyderabad, NEOSU, Tahlequah, OK, and Rocky Mountain College of art in Denver, CO. Sangeeta grew up in an artistic family – her maternal grandmother was a contemporary of the classical vocalist Kesarbai Kerkar, her grandfather a connoisseur of the arts. Steeped in music, her mother was one of the first disciples of the late Pandit Ravi Shankar. Her father was a pictorial photographer who co-founded the Hyderabad Photographic Society. Reddy’s work in abstraction of mixed media collages on paper and canvas began with the ideas of 5th C philosopher Sankara’s idea of Brahman, evolving into among other features, a formal language of deconstructed Devanagari calligraphy. Her artistic influences range widely from Indian weaving and hand loomed textiles to an early interest in Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso and Tapies, then Western and Canadian landscape painters, as well as the Abstract expressionists - Rothko, Gorky, De Kooning, Motherwell and Diebenkorn. Reddy has participated in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Aspen, Denver, New York, Santa Fe, Sarajevo, New Delhi, Chennai, and Hyderabad. Since 1985 she has been represented by various galleries in the same cities. Parallels, Reddy has written several novels and a screenplay. A chapter from her first novel was anthologized in a prize winning collection of essays.