About Shakti Maira

Shakti Maira is an artist, sculptor and printmaker. He has had 25 one-person shows, the first of which was in 1973 in Mumbai. Since then, his work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in Boston, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., Manchester, Concord, Henniker, Hollis, Acton, Portland, Newport, Portsmouth, Santa Fe, Cambridge, Rotterdam, Colombo, Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Shakti recently completed a set of 12 six-foot-high bronze sculpture – The Sangha.

His work is in the National Gallery of Modern Art in India, and in private collections around the world.

He has been engaged in children’s education and development through art, and has conducted numerous workshops in schools in the US and India. In 2005 he helped organize the Learning through the Arts  in Asia  symposium in New Delhi, and was invited by UNESCO to formulate the Asian Vision of Arts in Education: Learning through the Arts.

Shakti Maira

In 2006 he was appointed as a consultant by The India Foundation of the Arts (IFA).

He has written extensively on art, aesthetics, education and culture. In 2006, his book Towards Ananda: Rethinking Indian Art and Aesthetics was published by Penguin/Viking, which has developed a following around the world for pulling art out of its modern confusions and reconnecting it with everyday life and living.

He is a public speaker on contemporary issues in aesthetics, beauty, art and culture in India and abroad. His talks have included: ‘Buddhist Aesthetics’ and ‘Spirituality in Contemporary Art’ in New Delhi. He has spoken about beauty at the Resurgence Summer Camp in Wales in 2008, as well as at public talks in London and Glasgow.

In 2009, Shakti gave the keynote lecture at Mystics and Scientists, the annual Scientific and Medical Network Conference, in Winchester, UK. In 2010, he delivered a lecture on ‘Beauty: A Fundamental Organizing System in the 'Relational' World’ at the Cortona-India conference on Science and the Spiritual Heritage of India at Hyderabad. Recently, in 2011, he was invited to speak on art and aesthetics at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Shakti has also been engaging in a series of dialogues on beauty with scientists, philosophers and environmentalists, and is co-organizer of an international conference, The End of Art and The Promise of Beauty, in February 2012.

Shakti trained as an economist and business manager from prestigious colleges in India. From 1968 to 1990 he balanced careers as a professional artist with managerial and consulting assignments with multinational banks and corporations around the world, including the World Bank. Since 1990, he has devoted his time fully to art and writing.