Venkatesh’s Tendulkar ‘quest’ remains incomplete

Warangal artist awaits PM’s signature

Warangal: Painter Venkatesh Kandunoori is on a mission - to collect signatures of important people on a large sized celebratory sketch of cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar.

Over the past four years, Kandunoori, who belongs to the city, has been travelling to various parts of the country accumulating signatures from personalities across the world.

It includes those by Pranab Mukherjee, APJ Abdul Kalam and Amitabh Bachchan to Sir Vivian Richards. Members of the 2011 Cricket World Cup winning team and of course from Tendulkar himself have been assiduously garnered on the canvas.

However, his obsession to have the 100th signature, which is of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is yet to be realised. In order to have Modi’s endorsement, he is presently camping in the national capital for close to three months.

The four-and-a-half foot mixed media portrait, celebrates the life and times of the Little Master by incorporating various symbols representing his cricketing achievements. It also has elements of national symbols and smaller sketches of other cricketing legends.

"I travelled across the length and breadth of the country and have gone through much travail to get those signatures," says Venkatesh.

The artist recounts that he had to "wait outside Amitabh Bachchan`s residence for five days before I was ushered in."

A student of fine arts, Kanunoori wants to "raise money to fund education of underprivileged children. Besides this I "want to create my own individual."

Cautiously trying to avoid the tag of "just another Sachin fanatic", he points out, "I am not a crazy fan of Sachin. This is simply an attempt to inspire people. An art form is complete in the real sense of the term only when it has an inherent story which inspires people and Sachin fulfills that objective."

Kanunoori says the mix-media piece of painting, of acrylic colours, oil colours and strokes of pencil, took him eight months to complete.

"I began right after India won the World Cup in 2011. Honestly, I didn`t expect the kind of reception that this painting has received," explains the 27-year-old student at Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University of Fine Arts.

Although he has gifted individual portraits to all the personalities he met, Kanunoori says he has made a one-foot tall brass statue of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel especially for the Prime Minister.