Bapu

Sattriraju Lakshmi Narayana, also known as Bapu was born on 14th of December in 1933 in Narsapur, West Godavari, Andhra Pradesh. He graduated as a lawyer from University of Madras in 1955. He joined as political cartoonist for the newspaper Andhra Patrika in 1955. He later went on to become designer, movie director and a popular painter.

Painting Style

Bapu introduced a new style of painting using simple bright colours which are easy on the eye. His unique style of economy of strokes, freehand drawing and non-usage of background clutter made the paintings simple, beautiful and popular. He specializes in Hindu mythological characters and has painted the Hindu epic Ramayana as a pictorial story. In his paintings, characters like Shiva, Bhima, Duryodhana look distinctly male with wide chests, bigger jaws and large biceps, while Krishna and Rama have a tinge of feminine sensitivity. All his female characters (including Hindu Goddesses) have deer like eyes, a waist-hip ratio of 0.7, voluptuous breasts, long hair and a sharp nose. In fact, the phrase Bapu Bomma (Bapu's painting) has become synonymous with a beautiful girl in Telugu. Another character called Rendu Jedala Seetha (Seetha, a girl with two plaits) later became a synonym with any girl wearing two plaits.

Bapu has also introduced a new cursive writing in Telugu which is probably the only alternative to the more traditional print font in Telugu.

Collaborations with other artists

He worked with Satyam Sankaramanchi and drew hundered and one pictures for each of the stories in Amaravati Kathalu. He collaborated with comic writer Mullapudi Venkata Ramana and gave life to Mullapudi's characters Budugu and his family in the form of pictures.

Movies

Bapu has directed movies like Muthyala Muggu, Mana Voori Pandavulu, Sampoorna Ramayanam (The complete Ramayana), Pelli Pustakam (The book of marriage), Saakshi (witness), Mr.Pellam (Mr.Wife), Tyagayya (a biopic on the life of Saint Tyagaraja) and Radha Gopalam (Radha and Gopalam).

The paintings are the excellent portrayal of the events and scenes that we see around us. The painters are the best cameras of the world. They reproduce many different types of pictures. They even draw imaginary pictures that do not exist in this world. We tend to use both thinned oil paints and dense oil paints. Masterpieces can be dyed more than once, but each time it may be different from the existing paintings.h

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