NAGUESH RAO SARDESSAI
Passion and spontaneity is seen in through the bold paintings of German born Dietrich Kerky’s that’ll be shown at the ‘Gallery Gitanjali’, Fontainhas, Panaji, from March 21. The show titled ‘Between Worlds’ will be having over 20 colourful paintings on display.
Having shown his works, over four years back, at the said art gallery, Dietrich clearly seem to have grown in passion and enthusiasm despite his growing age putting many a young people to shame.
Dietrich’s life is full of colourful events and his paintings reflect that fascinating aspect. Bubbly, forceful, brazen and oblivious of the academic niceties, his paintings speak an altogether different language. It’s not anti – establishment, however it’s definitely not sugarcoated either.
Sexually explicit positions and in-your-face compositions confront the viewers. The figures, at times remain prominent and in some canvases they surprisingly are ambiguous and not easily decipherable. The figures, one can say, play hide and Seek with the viewers which facilitates the whole canvas to slip into a sporadic dance of seemingly amorphous happenings. ‘At times’, says Dietrich, ‘the viewers interpretation of my works have been completely paradoxical to the original idea projected on to the canvas.’ He seems to have no problem with it as long as the onlooker makes sense in his own sweet way.
A great admirer of Wasily Kandinsky, Dietrich, this writer feels display selective shades of Spanish Rococo/Romantic painter Francisco de Goya and Irish born British artist Francis Bacon as well.
From being a soldier in his teens to being held as prisoner of war in Siberia, Dietrich moved on to make puppets for a living before he was picked up to act in films. It was here that he began sketching lines from the script for easy recollection of dialogues. These sketches caught the attention of a well-known artist who prodded him to exhibit the same.
Dietrich, since his first exhibition in the year 1965, has consistently shown in Europe, South America and Asia.
An Expressionist in the stylistic sense, Dietrich’s connections with people and his observation is amazingly uncanny. The works displayed here have scenes and people from the tangible place in Calangute where he currently resides to imaginary ideas that are cooked up in the realm of his fertile mind. These excessively expressionist works that apparently seem semi abstracts and cacophonic, invite the viewers to draw their own conclusion.
Few of the expressionist portraits on paper add variety to the show of works of assorted size and vivid colours.
Dietrich has held over sixteen exhibitions of paintings and directed and acted in sixty films and thirty television serials.
