About
HindiPoster wants to preserve and document handprinted indian cinema poster art and
pay tribute to Mr. Balkrishna Laxman Vaidya (1930-2015) and his team. Mr. Balkrishna was a an exceptional person, studio-owner and artist who invited us
backstage.
Exhibitions
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, 2002
Exhibition of original vintage Posters and portraits of Balkrishna Vaidya and live painting event of giant exhibition poster in front of museum.
Was für Hollywood einst der Orient, das ist für Bollywood heute die Schweiz: Ein lockendes Paradies, der Himmel auf Erden. ...More
Victoria & Albert Museum London, V&A, 2002
Cinema India: The Art of
Bollywood
The historical, political and cultural changes in India, as seen through
the eyes of the film industry. The extraordinary talent of the hoarding artist was highlighted, with artists from India specially commissioned to demonstrate their unique art. Three works were hand-painted on site at the V&A, providing a rare opportunity to see this fascinating ...More
National Gallery Mumbai NGMA
Balkrishna Vaidya one of well known billboard painters of 20th century in India. He began painting posters of most iconic figures of Bollywood industry at the age of 12. Balkrishna Vaidya a well known bill board painter of twentieth century India. The hand- painted bill boards flourished to heighten film industries in mainly Mumbai and Chennai. ...More
Palais X-Tra, Zürich, 1994
First Live Painting Event of Balkrishn'Art Studio outside of India.
Books
Press
THE HINDU - December 31, 2014
A film unearths the master artists who gave us some memorable film hoardings, posters and cut-outs For how long have we moaned and lamented about the disappearance of those mega-sized hoardings bearing larger-than-life figures of our favourite actors in all possible hues with the arrival of vinyl and flex prints. Once upon a time, these bright and loud banners, announcing the arrival of a new film, were entrusted with the responsibility of bringing the viewers into theatre halls. And the banners did the job without any help from social media, multi-city tours of the cast and crew and promotions on television and radio stations. But whose were those skilled hands and creative imagination ...more
The Telegraph India - February, 2006
Second coming for hand-painted posters
Not before it was killed by technology. The hand-painted film poster and hoarding, which had offered a young M.F. Husain his livelihood when he first came to the city, has been declared dead, as the film industry here does not want those pink-fleshed heroes and heroines with slightly grotesque, sometimes not slightly, faces and figures against flaming backgrounds any more. The industry has opted for complete digitisation in its publicity materials ' there are special shoots of the stars working in a film, the photo CD is fed into the computer, layout is made on the screen, and out comes the film poster in glistening vinyl. But somewhere out there, there is a growing craze for the abandoned tradition. In his old, small Balkrishn Studio in a Dadar lane, sits Balkrishn Vaidya, proprietor, a 73-year-old man who has been in the business for more than 50 years. Three years ago, for him and his fellow poster painters, ...More
BMW Guggenheim Lab - February, 2013
Mumbai’s film industry is deeply connected to and defined by the city itself—and so are the painted movie posters that have long been used to advertise Bollywood films. But modern printing techniques have rapidly replaced the traditional oil-on-canvas promotional art. We experienced a live demonstration from one of Mumbai’s oldest and most established billboard painters, and tried our hand at it alongside some of Mumbai’s last remaining Bollywood artists. Participant: Balkrishna Vaidya, film poster artist. More... Read online
Times of India - January, 2010
Balkrishn Laxman Vaidya cannot remember the last time he painted a poster for a new Hindi film. The 75-year-old self-taught hoarding painter who once ran Studio Balkrishn and worked with the likes of Manoj Kumar and Nasir Hussain, is now reduced to recreating posters of classic Hindi movies - Mughal-e-Azam or Mother India perhaps - for the occasional collector who drops by his tiny suburban studio in Mumbai. Sometime in the early 1990s, digital technology rendered Vaidya's occupation obsolete. "Once upon a time, there were 30 to 40 men working under me," he says ruefully, "those men are now watchmen or drivers. All that is left are the memories." ...more
BBC NEWS - World Edition, June 2002
Bollywood posters tell a story
The Indian film industry is often in the news these days, with the launch of the latest West End musical Bombay Dreams complimenting the growing Western audience for Indian films. Now the V&A has launched a new exhibition entitled Cinema India: The Art of Bollywood, looking at the film posters of the Indian film industry and the contemporary works of art they have inspired. The industry was transformed in the 1970s
It turns out to be a fascinating insight into the history of Indian cinema, where the first moving images reached the sub-Continent only six months after they were first shown by the Lumiere brothers in Paris in 1896. ...More