Oil painting -> List of Painters -> Bapu

Bapu

Early Life: Bapu Sattriraju Lakshmi Narayana, also known as Bapu. graduated as a lawyer from University of Madras in 1955. He joined as political cartoonist for the newspaper Andhra Patrika in 1955. He later went on to become designer, movie director and a popular painter.

Career:

Bapu introduced a new technique of painting using simple light colours which are easy on the eye. His unique style of cost-cutting measure of strokes, freehand drawing and non-usage of background clutter made the paintings simple, striking and popular. He specializes in Hindu mythological characters and has painted the Hindu epic Ramayana as a pictorial story. In his paintings, characters like Shiva, Bhima, Duryodhana look distinctly male with wide chests, bigger jaws and hefty biceps, while Krishna and Rama have a drop of feminine sensitivity. All his female characters have deer like eyes, a waist-hip ratio of 0.7, voluptuous breasts, long hair and a sharp nose. In fact, the phrase Bapu Bomma (Bapu's painting) has become synonymous with a beautiful girl in Telugu. Another character called Rendu Jedala Seetha later became a synonym with any girl tiring two plaits.

Bapu has also introduced a new cursive writing in Telugu which perhaps is the only substitute to the further traditional print font in Telugu.