The god of colour dances and sings in these paintings and ruminates in a uniquely Hindu way  - as Bhavsar said on the connection of beauty with destruction.

The exhibition has opened at Sundaram Tagore Gallery in the Village in New York City and will be on view till Dec 19.

Bhavsar has completely demolished appearance, form and contour. Nor is there any place for 'line' in the world of the colour-drunk Bhavsar. He has said goodbye to not only such staples of academic painting as 'highlights,' and 'shading' but also 'drawing.'

Bhavsar, for the past four decades a lively actor in the New York art scene, came to the US in the 1960s, the period which he describes as the "American renaissance". He had his studio behind Judson Church in Chelsea, where dancers and artistes huddled and plunged into the ferment that made New York the world capital of art.

"Natvar's compositions comprise either a ball of fire or sponge-like shapes hovering like a galaxy at the centre of ambient space of a different hue and tone, or all-over fields of colour hearkening back - as far as Western easel painting is concerned - to Monet's 'Nympheas'," writes art historian Michael J. Amy in the handsome catalogue of the exhibition.

"The cosmic spiritual dimension of these works is abetted by their often monumental scale, which sucks us in, thereby enabling us to leave the here and now.

"Bhavsar's glowing, optically ravishing pictures are capable of transporting us, as all art should, to a different plane."

--Indo-Asian News Service