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Grosvenor Gallery are delighted to share the news of the recent acquisition by Tate of six works by Lancelot Ribeiro (1933-2010). The acquisition includes the oil; Cityscape (Night),1963, the oil and PVA; The Warlord (Psychedelic Man Series), 1966, as well as four works on paper from 1964.
KNMA, New Delhi, have also acquired two large scale paintings; The Business Luncheon, 1966 and The Offering, 1966.
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"I AM UTTERLY DELIGHTED THAT THE TATE HAVE CHOSEN THESE PARTICULAR PLAYFUL ARTWORKS FOR THEIR COLLECTION. THAT HIS FAVOURITE - THE WARLORD - SITS AMONG THEM, HAS AN ADDED POIGNANCY FOR ME AND IS AN ACHIEVEMENT THAT I AM SURE WOULD HAVE MADE HIM PROUD."
MARSHA RIBEIRO, MAY 2021
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Lanceloté José Belarmino Ribeiro was born in Bombay (now Mumbai) in 1933. His mother, Lilia, made her living as a tailor and milliner, operating her business out of the family's third floor flat in ‘Hira Building’. His father, João, was an accountant. He had a half-brother, the artist Francis Newton Souza (1924-2002) and a sister, Marina. They were surrounded by a cluster of protective grandmothers and three loving and glamourous aunts.
Bombay was a lively and cosmopolitan city and still in an India under the British Empire. It was strategically situated for trade and industry and a thriving centre for the arts, culture and sciences which would inevitably mould Ribeiro's encyclopaedic knowledge. Hira Building overlooked Bombay's famous Crawford Market and through Ribeiro's formative years was a place where communities lived peacefully side by side.
The family split their time between Bombay and their ancestral home in Goa, a picturesque state on India's west coast which had been a ‘possession’ of the Portuguese Empire for 400 years. Goa's landscape left a deep imprint on Ribeiro and was a world away from the turbulent events unfolding in ‘British India’. It would not gain its independence from Portugal until 1961.
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Ribeiro's photograph of the fields of Goa
“...Arriving in Goa from Bombay by air is just 40 minutes but as these minutes go by the change in the landscape is staggering. The choked barrenness of the first 35 minutes give the feeling that whatever vegetation there is blisters and turns to the colour of ash... And then! As if in the 36th minute you see Goa bursting from the lip of the Arabian Sea... It was this visual beauty that made the Portuguese hold on to Goa so doggedly... who felt Goa should remain as it always was – Goa Dourado [Golden Goa]”.
-Ribeiro, undated diary entry
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Ribeiro returned to Bombay in 1955 after five years in Britain. It was his first solo show at Bombay's Artist Aid Salon (1961) which launched his career as a painter. It set his destiny as an artist in a direction that sometimes, he felt, was beyond his control. It won him an early patron in the form of Homi Jehangir Bhabha, the nuclear physicist and founding director of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and Trombay Atomic Energy Establishment. Bhabha secured him a commission from Tata Industries to paint the 12-foot ‘Urban Landscape’ mural for the Chairman and Chief Executive of Tata Iron and Steel, J.R.D. Tata. Further collector interest would soon follow. This included the trio of Jewish émigrés who had helped develop India's nascent modern art scene - Rudi von Leyden, Walter Langhammer and Emanuel Schlesinger, who had escaped Europe's Holocaust.
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His first paintings, produced in 1958, were oil townscapes on paper. Painted in an expressionist manner, these architectonic pieces, he explained, had a deliberate “structural and linear aspect” and were darkly-coloured with flashes of colour, imbued with the imprint Goa had left on him. His icon-like heads which would soon follow - often of Christ, bishops or saints - were also drawn from the Christian tradition.
“MY FIRST INFLUENCES... WERE THE CHURCHES AND STATUARY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN GOA ALONG WITH THE SYMBOLIC RITUAL THAT WENT WITH IT. THE OTHER AND PERHAPS THE STRONGEST INFLUENCE WERE THE PAINTINGS OF MY BROTHER 10 YEARS SENIOR.”
RIBEIRO, 1972, COMMONWEALTH INSTITUTE LECTURE
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Lancelot Ribeiro
Strange Town, 1962 Oil on board
Signed and dated 'Ribeiro '62' upper left
91.5 x 80 cm
36 1/8 x 31 1/2 in -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Untitled (Landscape with Pink Sky), 1965 Oil on board
Signed and dated lower right
30.5 x 28 cm
12 1/8 x 11 1/8 in -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Untitled (Landscape with Red Sun), 1965 Oil on board
Signed and dated lower right
30.5 x 28 cm
12 1/8 x 11 1/8 in -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Green Landscape, 1966 Oil on canvas
Signed and dated 'Ribeiro 60' (lower right); signed and dated 'Ribeiro 60', inscribed 'GREEN LANDSCAPE' and bearing Grosvenor Gallery label (on the reverse)
60 x 47 cm
23 5/8 x 18 1/2 in -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Untitled (Goan Landscape with Black Sun), 1962 Oil on board
61.5 x 125.5 cm
24 1/4 x 49 3/8 in
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Ribeiro's youth spent in a cosmopolitan and vibrant Bombay undoubtedly nurtured his life-long interests which included music, literature, philosophy and astronomy. His artistic temperament was also shaped by the open house atmosphere of Hira Building where artists, writers and poets came and went. He had witnessed his brother's career emerge and known Souza's circle of artists and friends.
Ribeiro was, however, still a poet at heart and the only painter reading his work at British Council poetry-readings.
“In April 1962 ... the American poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Peter Orlovsky were in Bombay. After their reading on the terrace of theater director Ebrahim Alkazi's house on Warden Road, Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jussawalla, Lance, and I, together with the American poets, walked down to Ezekiel's apartment at 67 Breach Candy. When we got there, Ginsberg wanted to know what Indian poets were like...”
From ‘Remembering Lance Ribeiro’ R. Parthasarathy's essay, ‘Restless Ribeiro’, 2012
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UPON THIS DARK STAIR WITHIN YOUR MIND
WITH NO RAIL TO HOLD
SET DOWN YOUR SOUL,
WITH EYE WIDE OPEN.
AND YOU SHALL FALL
UNSEEING.
AS I AM FALLING.
TO NO KINGDOM
AND NO DYING.FROM RIBEIRO'S ‘THE RISEN VOICE’, C.1961
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Ribeiro held exhibitions in several of London's leading West End galleries of the day, including the Piccadilly, Crane Kalman, Rawinsky and Mount Galleries. It featured in Nicholas Treadwell's mobile art galleries - a fleet of double-decker buses and vans which took art into Britain's suburbs to potential customers who had walls “waiting to be filled”.
At the end of 1962, having had nine solo and group shows, Ribeiro and his wife decided to settle in Britain where he felt he would thrive.
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In the early 1960s, Ribeiro broke away from the structural forms of his earlier works, to begin an intensive experimental phase. Patrick Boylan noted traditional painting techniques had “begun to wear thin on this restless young painter”. In his search for a new medium, the new synthetic plastic bases that were being introduced for commercial paints caught his interest and so began ‘several hundred’ experiments on hardboard, plywood, canvas and paper using Polyvinyl Acetates (PVA) at different rates of plasticity.
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“WHAT I HAVE TRIED TO DO IS TO TAKE A PAINTING AND BREAK IT DOWN - SOMEWHAT LIKE A CHILD'S JIGSAW PUZZLE AND THEN RECONSTRUCT THE WHOLE AGAIN EMBRYONIC STYLE.”
RIBEIRO, 1972 COMMONWEALTH INSTITUTE LECTURE
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Retracing Ribeiro
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Selected Exhibitions
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Lancelot Ribeiro, An Artist in India and Europe
15 April - 8 May 2015 Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to present the upcoming exhibition; Lancelot Ribeiro, An Artist in India and Europe, to be shown in London from 15 April to 8 May 2015. The... -
Indian Modernist Landscapes, 1950-1970, BAKRE/RIBEIRO/SOUZA
Asian Art in London 2016 2 - 25 November 2016 During Asian Art in London 2016 Grosvenor Gallery will be showing landscape paintings by three Indian artists who were living and working in London during the 1950s and 60s; Sadanand... -
Lancelot Ribeiro, A Voyage of Discovery
New Walk Museum, Leicester 4 March - 6 May 2018 Lancelot Ribeiro: A Voyage of Discovery This exhibition explores the legacy and art of the Indian Modernist painter Lancelot Ribeiro (1933-2010). Restless, prolific and experimental, he produced a unique body... -
Lancelot Ribeiro: An Artist in India & Europe
Held at Oberon Gallery, Leicester 2 - 17 March 2018 Lancelot Ribeiro: An Artist in India and Europe Oberon Gallery, Leicester Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to present the upcoming exhibition; Lancelot Ribeiro, An Artist in India and Europe, to be...
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Selected News Articles
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Art UK - The Roots of the Indian Artists' Collectives
A new exhibition tracing the history of the Indian Painters Collective, UK (IPC) opens in London this week. It charts the origins of a 25-year movement that advocated for their... -
Retracing Ribeiro | Burgh House & Hampstead Museum
26th October 2016 – 19th March 2017 October 26, 2016 Burgh House, Ribeiro, -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Taken from India Quarterly, by Anita Roy January 9, 2017 Enter the Lancelot Ribeiro retrospective at Burgh House in London's Hampstead and you're almost immediately caught in the crossfire. To your left is a large painting composed in oils and... -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Hidden Treasures from the Camden Collection The prolific Hampstead painter Lancelot Ribeiro was one of the most original of the Indian artists who settled in Britain in the post-war period. An exhibition of his life and... -
Lancelot Ribeiro
Camden New Journal -
Painting a Picture of Ribeiro's Life
Exhibition curated by his daughter explores the works of Francis Newton Souza's sibling Lancelot
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Available Publications
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Lancelot Ribeiro, An Artist in India and Europe
Lancelot Ribeiro was one of the most original of the Indian artists who settled in Britain after the Second World War. Although there has been a surge of interest in... -
Restless Ribeiro, An Indian Artist in Britain
This is the accompanying book to the 2013 retrospective of work by the Indian artist Lancelot Ribero, held at Asia House, London, and curated by Katriana Hazell. Reproducing over 70... -
The Roots of the Indian Artists' Collectives
The exhibition catalogue for our July 2019 exhibition 'The Roots of the Indian Artists' Collectives'. Featuring an essay by Marsha Ribeiro, archive material from group members, as well as images...
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BIOGRAPHY
Click below to discover more about the artist as well as available works
Lancelot Ribeiro
Past viewing_room
