The Five Chapters of Ravi Vilo
Ravi Vilo; distinguished painter, art critic, analyst and teacher, recognised that his formative years, the 1920s, fell into a sequential series of phases that he referred to as the ‘Chapters’ of his life’s ideas, ambitions and relationships.Each was played out on a different stage, starting in Bombay, where he received his schooling and initial art education. He then travelled to England by ship through the Suez Canal, on which he made a friendship that coloured his social and working relationships throughout the rest of his life. In London he received a graduate degree in painting, culminating in his masterpiece, which placed him at the forefront of Modern Art in Britain.At the breakup of the group of friends with whom he lived with his partner, he left Europe for South America, where they settled in Popayán, Colombia, conducting a programme of community culinary, health, and artistic development that drew international attention, taking him to Paris in the early 1930s.