Biography:

Shan Ré

Biography

India, 1960

Born in the picturesque Kulu Valley and self-taught since childhood, Shan Ré is perhaps the only contemporary artist who experiments with Free Association Drawings (small, spontaneous drawings, often done with eyes closed).

She started showing professionally in the late 70's.
In 1980 she married the Italian-American artist Rigvedon Revola and moved to New York. Through the 80's and 90's Shan established herself as a painter, producing several successful collections like "The Nocturnals", "Tribal Heads", "Memories of Kulu Valley".
In 2000, she started to experiment with Free Association Drawings.
Shan currently lives and works in Bangalore, India.
She continues to paint to this day, but at the moment it is her drawings that have been garnering attention...

"Seated at dawn in my silent studio
Alone, a pencil moves my hand across the paper
Slender lines leap out of the solitude
Making me pronounce that which is not seen", writes Shan about her drawings.

Each free-association drawing, while it might have a life of its own, triumphantly captures Shan’s spirit and essence. Through the process of Free Association Shan is able to abandon everything and tap into the energy within her soul to create these simple yet powerful drawings that often invoke within the viewer those elusive feelings of rapture, hope and even tranquility.

Over the years Shan Ré’s drawings have gone from being purely abstract to somewhat figurative. Her latest series titled "The Eternal Spring" is filled with motifs resembling birds, flowers, musicians, dancers and even religious icons like Ganesh and Buddha.

She began experimenting with this process about five years ago and at the last count Shan Ré estimated that she had produced 7000 free-association drawings, each of which is an ode to spontaneity and intuition.


SELECTED COLLECTIONS (Paintings & Drawings)
- Personal collection of Francis Ford Coppola, San Francisco
- Society for Psychical Research, London
- Museum of Modern Art, New Delhi
- Personal Collection of Jackie Collins, L.A.
- Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, India
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