Interesting Facts about Lancelot Ribeiro, an Indian Expressionist Painter

The Google Doodle for today honors the 91st birthday of Lancelot Ribeiro, an Indian Expressionist painter best recognized for his pioneering use of materials in his artwork. His artworks, known for their experimental use of medium, spanned a wide range of styles throughout a six-decade career. Although Ribeiro was born in Bombay, India, on November 28, 1933, his ancestry was from Goa. Here are some interesting and fun facts about Lancelot Ribeiro.

Here is a look at the life and work of Lancelot Ribeiro.

Who was Lancelot Ribeiro?

Expressionist painter Lancelot Ribeiro is most recognized for his experimentation with oil and polyvinyl acetate paints, the forerunner of modern acrylic paints. The Independent says he was at “the vanguard of the influx of Indian artists to Britain.”

Quick Look

• Birth name: Lanceloté José Belarmino Ribeiro
• Birth date: 28 November 1933
• Birthplace: Bombay, British India
• Died on: 25 December 2010 (aged 77)
• Death place: London, United Kingdom
• Resting place: Ernest George Columbarium, Golders Green Crematorium, London NW11 7NL
• Nationality: Indian ‘British Subject by Birth’ (in 1950), changed to Indian and then applied for British Nationality in 2004
• Education:
  • St Xavier’s High School for Boys, Bombay (1939–1942)
  • St Mary’s Senior Cambridge School, Mount Abu, Rajputana (1944–1950)
• Known for: Paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, poetry, and critical writings, Founder member of the Indian Painters Collective, UK (1963) and IAUK (1978/79)
• Notable works: The Warlord (1966), King Lear (1964), Stricken Monk (1968)
• Style: Expressionist painting, Acrylics
• Movement: Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism
• Spouse: Ana Rita Pinto Correia (m. 1960)
• Children: Two daughters
• Relatives: F. N. Souza (half-brother)
• Awards:
  • Awarded a grant from the Congrés pour la Liberté de la Culture [Congress for Cultural Freedom], Paris in 1962
  • Nominated for All India Gold Medal (c.1961)
• Patron(s):
  • Dr Homi Bhabha, TATA Group, Prof. Patrick Boylan (New Walk Museum & Art Galleries),
  • Amb. Salman Haidar Former Foreign Secretary

30 Interesting Facts about Lancelot Ribeiro

1. Born on November 28, 1933, in Bombay (now Mumbai), Lancelot Ribeiro was born Lanceloté José Belarmino Ribeiro to Goan Catholic parents, João José Fernando Flores Ribeiro, an accountant, and his dressmaker wife, Lilia Maria Cecilia de Souza (née Antunes).
2. In 1950, Ribeiro relocated to London to live with his brother and pursue his studies in accounting. Between 1951 and 1953, while enrolled in classes at St. Martin’s School of Art, he gave up his career as an accountant.
3. After serving in Dumfries with the Royal Air Force, he returned to Bombay. In 1958, he started painting professionally after working for Life Insurance Corporation.
4. His career as a painter began in 1961 when his first exhibition at Bombay’s Artist Aid Centre sold out immediately. It attracted interest from other corporate collectors and earned him a commission from Tata Industries to paint a 12-foot mural for J.R.D. Tata, the chairman and CEO of Tata Iron & Steel. Among them were Rudi von Leyden, Walter Langhammer, and Emanuel Schlesinger, three Jewish émigrés who had fled the Holocaust in Europe and contributed to the development of India’s fledgling modern art scene.
5. Over six decades, Lancelot Ribeiro produced a diverse wide-ranging, and experimental in terms of form, style, and medium. He was regarded as “a godfather to generations of artists using acrylics as an alternative to oils” (The Times, 2011) because of his experiments with polyvinyl acetate (PVA).
6. The first unofficial body of its kind outside of India was the Indian Painters Collective, UK (IPC), which he co-founded in 1963 with other painters. After advocating for improved representation of artists from the subcontinent for 25 years, the IPC changed its name to Indian Artists UK (IAUK) in 1978–79.
7. The Independent described Lancelot Ribeiro as “the vanguard of the influx of Indian artists to Britain.”
8. Throughout his half-century creative career, Ribeiro gained recognition for his “huge body” of abstract and figurative art.
9. Lancelot Ribeiro studied in art classes at London’s Saint Martin’s School of Art from 1951 to 1953. He wrote poems, experimented with jewelry design, and studied life drawing at Saint Martin’s School of Art.
10. He organized the Bombay Art Society Salon, his first solo exhibition, in 1960. It sold very quickly.
11. Five more exhibitions followed this in Calcutta (Kolkata), New Delhi, and Bombay (Mumbai).
12. His first solo art exhibition was held at the Bombay Artist Aid Centre in 1961. It was given a thorough tour of India, Europe, the United States, and Canada and was featured in the Ten Indian Painters exhibition. Additionally, he was commissioned by the Tata Iron and Steel Company to create a 12-foot painting.
13. In 1962, Lancelot Ribeiro went back to London with his wife. There he obtained a grant from the Congress for Cultural Freedom in Paris. He had 10 exhibitions by the time he moved to Britain in 1962, one of which went on tour in Europe and North America.
14. His early paintings featured still lifes, figures, and townscapes, many of which were influenced by his Goan heritage. These were mostly oil paintings, but he soon looked for new types of polyvinyl acetate, or PVA, and colored them to create his paints, which were an early version of acrylic paints. His work was drastically changed by the quicker drying times and more vivid color possibilities.
15. He had mixed exhibitions at the Yvon Lambert Gallery in Paris and the Piccadilly, Rawinski, John Whibley, and Crane Kalman galleries in London.
16. Lancelot Ribeiro was nominated for the All India Gold Medal.
17. He was a co-founder of the Indian Painters’ Collective in 1963.
18. He performed both alone and in groups during the 1960s and 1970s. At the Commonwealth Institute, Ribeiro gave lectures on Indian art and culture.
19. In 1986, the Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery hosted a retrospective of his work from the 1960s.
20. Lancelot Ribeiro’s artwork was shown at the Camden Arts Centre in 1987.
21. His artwork was shown at the LTG Gallery in New Delhi in 1998.
22. After a long break, he displayed one painting at the 2010 British Art Fair.
23. A retrospective exhibition was held in May and June 2013 at Asia House in London. In November, an exhibition was scheduled for New Delhi.
24. In collaboration with the British Museum and other institutions, the exhibition Ribeiro: A Celebration of Life, Love, and Passion took place in November 2016 as part of the 2017 UK-India Year of Culture.
25. Lancelot Ribeiro died in London on December 25, 2010, at the age of 77. His cause of death is unknown, but he left behind extensive critical and poetic writings and his artistic legacy of artwork.
26. He produced a “huge body” of abstract and figurative art during his half-century-long artistic career.
27. His creative output included landscapes, still lifes, portrait heads, and pigment experiments that began in the early 1960s and “lead to works of peculiar brilliance and transparency.”
28. In India, the UK, Paris, Germany, and the US, Lancelot Ribeiro had about 70 solo and group exhibitions during his career.
29. Unquestionably, his contributions to the art scene as a technical innovation cleared the path for upcoming artistic generations.
30. Google released a Google Doodle to celebrate Lancelot Ribeiro’s 91st birthday on November 28, 2024.