Natvar Bhavsar was born in 1934 in Gothava in the state of Gujarat in India. In 1958 Bhavsar earned a master's degree in art at the CN School of Art in Ahmedabad, India. In 1959 he was awarded a government diploma in art and in 1960 he earned a BA in English literature from Gujarat University. In 1962 he enrolled for one semester at the Philadelphia College of Art; he then enrolled in the Tyler School of Art also in Philadelphia. He attended the graduate school of art at the University of Pennsylvania.

Although Bhavsar first developed skills as a realist painter, by the time he was in Philadelphia he had become an abstract painter. He was influenced by Robert Motherwell, David Smith and Barnett Newman whom he met as a student at the ...