Born in 1903 in Austria, Strausz-Hupé immigrated to the United States in 1923. Serving as an advisor on foreign investment to American financial institutions. In the late 1930s he took up a position at the University of Pennsylvania, and became an Associate Professor in 1946.

Strausz-Hupé went on to have a long and successful career as a foreign policy advisor and diplomat, advising Barry Goldwater, the Republican Party's candidate for President of the United States in 1964, and Richard Nixon during his successful 1968 campaign for President. In 1970 he was appointed U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands and subsequently served as ambassador to Belgium (1972–1974), Sweden (1974–1976), NATO (1976–77), and Turkey (1981–1989).

Lain Singh Bangdel is known as Nepal’s most important modernist painter, as well as a novelist, scholar, and preservationist. Born in Darjeeling, he graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Calcutta with a degree in Fine Arts in 1945. After graduating, Bangdel found work as a commercial artist at the Kolkata-based firm D.J. Keymer, where he formed a lifelong friendship with acclaimed Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray. During this period, Bangdel produced paintings of everyday life in Bengal, including Calcutta’s impoverished suburbs.

Whilst living in Calcutta he wrote novels in Nepali, including Muluk Bahira (Outside the Country, 1948), Maitaghar (Maternal Home, 1950), and Langadako Saathi (The Cripple’s Friend, 1951), all of which became important texts in Nepali Universities.

In 1952, Bangdel travelled to Europe and studied art in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he developed close relationships with other international artists including Francis Newton Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Sayed Haider Raza and Maqbool Fida Husain, as well as the Indonesian artist Affandi, and other artists of the Asian diaspora. In Paris, Bangdel also met many other renowned artists like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, figures that had a significant impact during his formative artistic years. Bangdel began to make a name for himself as an artist and intellectual engaged with the modernist movement, regularly exhibiting and hosting dinners at his Paris apartment.

Eager to study the work of European modernists and old masters alike, Bangdel travelled extensively throughout Europe in the 1950s. At this time experimenting with abstract painting, influenced by cubism and the ethereal imagining of Nepal, such as the painting in our exhibition.

In 1960 he was invited by King Mahendra to become a member of the Royal Nepal Academy and in ’61 he moved back to Nepal to help organise the modern aesthetic movement there, holding a pioneering exhibition in Kathmandu in 1962. He would remain in Nepal for the rest of his life.

In an essay titled My Devotion to Art written in 1980, Bangdel explains, “We can perceive this entire external world that our naked eyes can see in a tangible as well as abstract manner. This is because humans possess both sight and heart.” Bangdel arrived at this view through his production of art in the 60s and 70s, painting both realistic depictions of the arresting Himalayan Mountain range and the abstracted colours and forms stemming from these landscapes.

References
Moon Over Kathmandu, Asia Society, USA
RossiRossi, Hong Kong