India’s best-known ceramic artist, Jyotsna Bhatt, born in 1940, breathed her last on July 11, 2020, at the age of 80, two days after she suffered a stroke. She was known as one of India’s best-known ceramic artists. Her works reflected her deep connection with nature, which she carefully moulded in numerous forms.
She studied at Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai for a year and was enrolled to study sculpture at MS University in Baroda in 1958. She also studied a course in ceramics at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, under Jolyon Hofsted in the mid-1960s. Thereafter, she settled in Baroda, where she worked as a faculty member at M.S. University from 1972 and retired as the head of the Department of Ceramics in 2002.
As an Artist
She experimented with stoneware, terracotta, and the countless possibilities that ceramics offered during more than five decades of her art practice. As a mentor and practitioner, she constantly upgraded, refined, and ennobled her art and created an original repertoire. She gave the earthy materials numerous shapes in her kiln, such as robust cats, chirping birds, ethereal lotus buds, and earth-toned platters, etc.
Her works are in prominent collections across the world. Simplicity and vividness were the best attributes to describe her art and ceramics. For her, simplicity meant silent sophistication.
With an intuitive instinct for powerful concision, she gave us nature’s ripples of flowers – blooming in grained, sandy textures, minimal yet minute to the detail. The bulbs she created are symbols of everyday reality, practical and beautiful in repose.