Prabhakar Kolte is an acclaimed painter whose striking body of work has been exhibited across India and the world. He was a student at the J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, and returned to teach there as well. A painter for over 40 years, Prabhakar Kolte has a signature style that uses colour and textures in the most arresting way.

In 1983, for the Foundation Course at J.J. School of Arts, he did something very unique – wrapping an entire car in newspaper – so that people would feel and sense the art, rather than just passively observe it. At that time, he broke the norm, playing with the way art was perceived in India. Since then, Prabhakar Kolte has developed his own approach to teaching and wishes to take that forward in an institution of his own.

While he is not painting, Prabhakar Kolte he loves reading, listening to music and writing poems.

Prabhakar Kolte was born in 1946 in Nerur Par, Maharashtra.

In 1968 he completed his diploma from the Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. From 1972 – 1994 he was a faculty member at Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai.

He has held several solo shows and participated in important group exhibitions:

From 1978 – 1998 he had several solo shows in Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and New Delhi.

From 1999 – 2007 he had various solo exhibitions in Mumbai, Germany, New Delhi, New York, Kolkata and Bangalore.

1990 he exhibited Art-Mosaic-celebration of Kolkata’s Tercentenary in Kolkata and Mumbai.

1993 he participated in Wounds at CIMA Gallery, Kolkata.

1993 – 1994 he took part in Parallel Perceptions at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai.

1995 he participated in Bombay – A Tribute to the City by RPG Enterprises, Mumbai.

2014 he exhibited ‘Deconstruction’, a solo show at Gallery 7, Kalaghoda in Mumbai.

2015 – 2016 he participated in Art for a Cause 2, Painting Dreams, Coloring Lives and Meher II – Art with a Heart at Gallery 7, Kalaghoda in Mumbai.

2016 Kolte was showcased as a part of a group show titled as, ‘The Melting Pot’ – 100 works by India’s Leading Modern and Contemporary Artists at Gallery 7, Mumbai.

2018 he exhibited a massive amount of his work from 1950’s to 2018 in his Solo show at Re-Unveiling Kolte at Nine Fish Art Gallery, Byculla, Mumbai.

In the aggressively marketed world of contemporary art today perhaps one of the greatest living legends and most reclusive of artists has finally been cajoled into coming out with a grand solo show. After years of shying away from the market space and the media, Prabhakar Kolte is ready to present his tremendous show – Re-Unveiling Kolte – at the Nine Fish gallery in association with Dot Line Space.

Like his reclusive and silent life, his deep abstract works delve into the silences of space and non-space, of attempts at closing the distances between being and non-being, existence and non-existence, the complex relationships between sound and form, space and representation. His works explore the very meaning of art and its materiality, and begin to close the distance between his own life and his canvases. To look at the recent works of this master is to be exposed to the unending questions of the purpose and expression of art itself and the paths it has traversed in the last few decades and perhaps the trajectories down which it will take us as viewers and more importantly as humans.

To stand with a required reverence before his canvases is to be exposed to the delicate, perhaps elusive, spaces where art and life meet in silent profundity. Kolte personifies this both through his life and his art. His privately lived, varied complex life, has been layered like his canvases, that of the personal, the academic, the social worker, and the role which is most important for him – that of the teacher. And so are his canvases, spaces – covered and hidden – then created again, then covered again, turned into other spaces, into non-spaces, eradicated or forgotten, and then created again, or older spaces struggling through the attempts to dissolve them . . . each with an existence of its own. “Re-Unveiling Kolte” chronicles the last decades of Kolte’s deep evolution and that of art. The show starts on the 9th of March in an equally and historically layered space, the Nine Fish gallery. Over the period of the show are related events, like talks, discussions, etc. relating to Dr Kolte’s art and evolution and the history of abstraction in India.