S.R. Kanakasabai

When the small circle that would call itself the ’43 Group met in a Colombo house on 29 August 1943 to sign their movement into being, one of the names on the committee was S.R. Kanakasabai. He is among the least recorded of the founders, and yet he was there at the start, a painter who had studied under Geoffrey Beling and who, in his working life, held the post of Inspector of Art for the Northern Province.

His part in the Group was brief, and then interrupted. He showed at its second exhibition, and then, after an absence of many years, returned in 1948 to hang a single painting titled ‘Black Out’.

He belongs here for a plain reason. A movement is made first by the people who begin it, and Kanakasabai was one of the few who put his name to the ’43 Group at its inaugural meeting, beside Wendt, Keyt and Beling, before the work that made the Group famous had been painted.

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Selected works

1. Black Out (1948), painting · shown with the ’43 Group, 1948.
   • Source: https://www.43group.org/chapters/chapter-14-once-and-future-artists
   • Alt: ’S.R. Kanakasabai, Black Out, the single painting with which he returned to exhibit with the ‘43 Group in 1948.’