Artist launches children’s book on art history

Chennai

Artist, designer and educator Arvind Sundar’s paintingpractice is so rooted in art history. After studying Communication Design inIndia, he left for the US to study painting. During that period, he visited allthe important museums there. “Once I stood before a painting of Jackson Pollockand that’s when I realised I can’t be anyone else other than a painter in thislife. I got a fellowship in 2017 to study the Renaissance art of Italy. Thetrip to Italy widened my knowledge of art history. In 2019 I came back to Indiaand started teaching art at Loyola College. While teaching I understood howthere is a lack of art history in our education curriculum. In the US, I haveseen teachers taking even kindergarten children to art museums as field trips.I started teaching art history to my students along with the foundation drawingclasses. Students were able to contextualise their drawings. A student oncedrew a landscape and he told me his skies were inspired by Van Gogh. It made meso happy,” says Arvind Sundar.

He has released a book titled Art History Typography thatteaches art history to children. “I tried to answer this question in this book:What if famous artists were typeface designers? The artists range from the 15thcentury to the 21st. Artists and typefaces are matched based on their names.For example A for Guiseppe Arcimboldo and B for Francis Bacon. I designed thetypefaces putting myself in the shoes of great artists who have been theinspiration for my art practice. It was a good experience to think like themasters and follow in their footsteps. In 2020, I came across the internettrend of 36 days of type where people design typefaces of 36 consecutive daysfrom A to Z and 0 to 9. Since alphabets are something children learn first, Ithought of participating in the 36 days of type and design typefaces with thetheme of art history. This wasn’t hard as I studied design before getting intoart and I used to work as a graphic designer in the advertising industry,” headds. The book is designed as an educational tool for both adults and children.