Katuri's Sculpture At Chitramayee

Chitramayee - State Gallery of Fine Arts is organising an exhibition of sculpture by Katuri Venkateshwara Rao from Tenali, from 13th to 25th May. About 30 statues of rural women in their domestic chores will be on display.

The display contains charming and pretty rural women, in their various lifestyles. The statues are lively and attractive, and the highlights of the display are a tribal woman with a pot on her head, a woman selling fish, a corn vendor, a green grocer, a black beauty with wood on her head, a woman who's just bathed and is fetching water in wet clothes and a young woman bathing. There are various other beauties in different styles. These figures have all been moulded with fibre.

Katuri Venkateshwara Rao was born in a family of sculptors, who've been inheriting this art from generations. His father Katuri Koteshwara Rao was a renown temple idol crafter. With no formal education, Venkateshwara Rao learnt the art from his father, and thereafter, bronze work from Ancha Radhakrishna Murthy, an international sculptor and a bronze statue specialist.

His multi-faceted talent in the construction of temples and churches, and in using bronze, panchaloha, silver, cement, Plaster of Paris and paper powder statues has helped him craft a variety of sculpture, and life-size statues of various personalities that have been installed at various towns and cities. His sculpture has been appreciated by many who felicitated him, like Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, K Rosaiah, N Chandrababu Naidu, K Jana Reddy and Dr C Narayana Reddy, and cine actors Sharada, Balakrishna and Akkineni Nageshwara Rao.

Venkatesh currently runs a sculpture training school in Tenali called Surya Silpasala, in which many students are learning his art.

Please contact the gallery at 2311-3308/98486-66262 for further details.