Sohan Qadri
Born to a wealthy farming family in the village Chachoki in Punjab, Sohan Qadri came across two spiritualists living on the family farm at the age of seven – Bikham Giri, a Bengali tantric-vajrayan yogi, and Ahmed Ali Shah Qadri, a sufi. Both gurus had a tremendous impact on young Qadri and taught him spiritual ideals through meditation, dance and music. His association with them heralded a lifelong commitment to spirituality and art.

Escaping from the assigned duty of farming, young Qadri first fled to the Himalayas and then made his way into Tibet, staying in monasteries for several months and taking to painting when compelled to return. Initially he painted like his contemporary modernists, veering towards abstraction away from figuration, but eventually abandoned representation altogether in search of transcendence or a new expression. The works he produced from then until his death were a meditative, unique exploration of tantra, where he built up compositions with rows of ink-dyed dots puncturing paper.

Qadri’s works form part of collections in Cologne, New York, Salem, New Jersey, Paris and, of course, India. A long term resident of Copenhagen, where he painted and taught yoga, Sohan Qadri passed away in Toronto, Canada, in 2011.