India, June 12 -- A Ramachandran, who passed away in 2024 at age 89, passionately encouraged artists to "develop a visual language and grammar of their own" when he was alive. Anyone who struggles to understand what that means should look at his own work. There's plenty of it. Ramachandran painted for seven decades - oil paintings, sculptures, watercolours, drawings, miniature paintings, and illustrations - and has reinvented himself multiple times, developing two distinct styles.

Or, they should drop in to the Vadehra Art Gallery in London, where the Kerala-born artist is being celebrated with a major retrospective of more than 30 works.

Take a look at Gestures, a triptych made in 1966. It's an unsettling intense image, painted across ...