Born in Gujarat, India in 1934, Natvar Bhavsar received his early artistic training at the CN School of art in Ahmedabad. While in India, Bhavsar explored the country's numerous ancient artistic sites such as the cave temples of Ajanta, Ellora and the Sun Temple of Modera as well as its folk and ritual cultures. This exploration left indelible impressions on him, as did a variant of abstract expressionism exhibited in India's museums. Perhaps more important to his own art were the Holi and Rangoli festivals; vibrantly colored gulal or dry pigments play a central role in the festivities and generate their visual impact. Through these experiences, Bhavsar was led to explore the language of color-field painting. Bhavsar left India in 1962 to further his education at the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Fine Arts. In 1965, he was recognized with a John D Rockefeller Grant, which launched him into the New York art world and helped begin his tenure as an active member of the New York school of colorists. For Bhavsar the process of painting is of the utmost significance, and his method of working with dry granules of pigment is a very deliberate and precise process. As a past director of the Wichita Museum in Kansas said while watching Bhavsar work, "As he moves the screen strainer over the paper or canvas field, he must control the rhythm of his own body movement." This controlled rhythm is contradicted in what appears to be the random shifting of all-over fields of variegated fluid and dense color. Colors migrate in patterns that are deeply pictorial in nature. As Carter Ratcliff wrote, "An extraordinary aspect of these canvases is the way a surface will drift to its full dimensions without the justifications of color logic." Bhavsar's images have a distinctively Indian sensibility in their lyrical and abstract attempts to reveal both the microcosmic and macrocosmic universe. Color signifies the vitality that makes the human race unique in the universal scheme. It recalls, very simply, the secret of life: a shifting panorama of sights, movement and feelings. As in the Indian festivals that inspire his work, Bhavsar's colors convey energy and the vivid, passionate pulse of life. Bhavsar's compositions are often monumental in size - some are more than thirty feet in length. Each one reveals indeterminable dimensions akin to cloud formations and spatial configurations of hues that emanate a spiritual aura. Of Bhavsar's work, art critic Christopher Andrae wrote, "It is expressionism which arises in a strange paradox somewhere extremely felt sensuousness and extremely felt contemplation. A visual equivalent, perhaps of eloquent silence."

Collection Highlights
Bhavsar's paintings are in more than 800 public and private collections, including those of the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Boston Museum of Fine Art, Boston and The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia. His paintings are included in the University Museums of Cornell, Brown and The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His work is also featured in many corporate collections such as AT&T, Exxon, American Express, Swiss Bank, Hilton Hotels, Mobil, NBC and Reader's Digest Association, Inc