"In my search for identity and roots --- an identity that is free of Western impact --- I have turned to mythology. I wanted to paint on subjects that belong to me and were a direct source of inspiration."

Born in 1932 in the East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, Redeppa Naidu attended the Madras College of Arts and Crafts and had the benefit of the best art education that the institution could offer in the mid-twentieth century.

Indian artists, in that era, were quite obsessed with Parisian modernism. But Naidu says that the great European experiment did not really influence his works. "I was not quite acquainted with impressionism, expressionism or cubism. If it was pointed out...