Meet Ramdev brothers, miniature artists from Rajasthan

"Our journey has not been a simple one. Our childhood was full of struggles. We went through tons of ups and downs and worked very hard, and our hard work supported our achievements. Also, it was not easy at that time to earn a livelihood as a miniature painting artist. But our hard work and efforts paid off in the end. It is the choices and the decisions that we have made at each step that helped us achieve all the glory.

We would give all the credit for our creativity to our father who had always been affectionate toward art. He painted for his inner peace and not for any commercial purposes. The thing that used to fascinate us most was his canvas, which was not restricted to paper, but he used various objects like almonds, mango seeds, coconut, and potatoes to carve out different motifs. Among all, sketching an eye was his all-time favorite.

With a vision to keep miniature art alive and promote great Indian traditional art globally, we established the Rangreet Art Institute in 1996. Since then, there has been no looking back.

We have organized numerous workshops at the national and international levels. We have conducted workshops in America and London for 10 years in a row. This was one of the greatest opportunities of a lifetime to spread awareness of Indian Traditional Art. In 1997, we started organizing workshops in Maharaja Sawai Man Singh ll Museum as well to connect people to the roots of Indian Art. We visited the Art Institute Chicago, Detroit Institute of Art, Indiana Police Museum, Oxford, and several Indian cities including Bangalore, Mumbai, and Jodhpur, and taught the students the technique of miniature art.

One more reason to set up an institute like Rangreet was that during our early learning phase, most great artists were anxious to share their techniques and never permitted anyone to set foot in their atelier which kept students away from learning the roots of Indian traditional Paintings. Having said that, my main objective was and still is to acquaint the learner with the basic details and tactics of Indian miniature art. Hence, we started teaching young artists by following the Guru–shishya Parampara.

Today, when the world is facing an unprecedented lockdown due to COVID-19, the Rangreet institute conducted free online classes to promote this art.

We admire the work and styles of many different artists. The Miniature Art is itself a very vast subject. So, if we talk about the soul of Indian Traditional Art which is the line and traditional figurative then I am a big fan of Shri Banu ji. For Rajasthani school work I would name shri Kripal Singh Shekhawat ji, Dwarka Prasad ji for Realistic Horse and Ram Gopal Vijayvargiya ji for Bengal wash technique. But among all, I love the traditional art of Bannu ji the most and Kangra Shaili has also been close to my heart."