THE Ann Bryant Art Gallery will exhibit a collection of acrylic paintings by Dr Amitabh Mitra in the Coach House.
The opening evening will take place at 6.30pm on September 27 and will conclude on October 3.
Cecila Makiwane Hospital’s CEO Dr Mtandeki Xamalashe will be chief of honour. Mitra studied medicine and did postgraduate studies in orthopaedic surgery at the Gajara Raja Medical College, Jiwaji University in Gwalior, India. He specialised in aerospace medicine and family medicine at the University of Pretoria.
A practitioner of orthopaedic surgery and trauma surgery, currently working at the Accident and Emergency unit of Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, he has published five volumes of poetry and exhibited his poetry art. Mitra figures in the international roster of physician poets, a massive roster of ancient and contemporary poets/writers maintained by Dr Daniel Bryant and assisted by Dr Suzanne Poirer, Professor of Literature and Medical Education, University of Illinois in the United States. He represented South Africa at the World Literature Festival in Oslo 2008.
A major section of Mitra’s work on art and poetry is devoted to Gwalior, where he grew up. His close friendship with the Maratha royal families resulted in his drawing a series of watercolour paintings involving poetry which he exhibited in South Africa and India.
A Slow Train to Gwalior is a coffee-table book of his art and poetry; a compact disc of his recitation with a backdrop of African traditional music was released by the then premier of Eastern Cape, Nosimo Balindlela, and a short documentary film on his Gwalior poetry was shown at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in 2009. In 2007 he was invited by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi, where he presented his work to a poetry-loving audience.
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