Taprobane Collection

Tissa
Ranasinghe
“Tissa’s work is open to numberless interpretations. It is not only Buddhist, or Asian, or religious. It is universal and timeless, and the thoughtful viewer may find all sorts of meanings in it that I have missed. Real art is not ‘art for art’s sake’, nor for moral or social improvement. It is a magic mirror in which one can see the most extraordinary things, some nice, some nasty, all vital to our understanding of what it means to be human.” - Michael Wright
Laki
Senanayake
“Today’s artists are expected to restrict themselves to a single medium,
a single style, a single theme. They are expected to be deadly serious,
about their work, to struggle with big intellectual issues and to express ,
their own inner emotions. Laki’s reputation suffers from the fact that he,
enjoys his work, that his art is suffused with wit and that he seeks to give,
pleasure to his public. However, he deserves to be recognized as one of the,
most important and significant Sri Lankan artists of the post-independence,
period.” – C. Anjalendran in collaboration with David Robson
Ivan Peries
‘He who never left paradise Ceylon’
Anoli Perera
“Materials, along with their historicity and metaphors, metamorphose
into Sri Lanka-based artist AnoliPerera’s exquisite works. Perera has been
combining the materials surrounding her, with the situations and experiences
in the social context she lives in.” – PayalKhandelwal, Colour Quotient
Justin
Daraniyagala
‘A philosopher, anthropologist, ethnologist, but first of all an artist, who was a visionary,
unique for his land and for his time’ (Weereratne, 1993, p87)
Richard Gabriel
‘A painter completely devoid of theories, conveying a primitive poetry of
Ceylon with delightful fancy’ – William Graham
George Keyt
‘Classic in thought but modernistic in treatment'
(An “Indian Express” correspondent)
George Claessen
‘The quintessentially calm, deliberate, contemplative artist’ - G. M. Butcher
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Tissa Ranasinghe
“Tissa’s work is open to numberless interpretations. It is not only Buddhist, or Asian, or religious. It is universal and timeless, and the thoughtful viewer may find all sorts of meanings in it that I have missed. Real art is not ‘art for art’s sake’, nor for moral or social improvement. It is a magic mirror in which one can see the most extraordinary things, some nice, some nasty, all vital to our understanding of what it means to be human.” - Michael Wright
Laki Senanayake
“Today’s artists are expected to restrict themselves to a single medium,
a single style, a single theme. They are expected to be deadly serious,
about their work, to struggle with big intellectual issues and to express ,
their own inner emotions. Laki’s reputation suffers from the fact that he,
enjoys his work, that his art is suffused with wit and that he seeks to give,
pleasure to his public. However, he deserves to be recognized as one of the,
most important and significant Sri Lankan artists of the post-independence,
period.” – C. Anjalendran in collaboration with David Robson
Ivan Peries
‘He who never left paradise Ceylon’
Anoli Perera
“Materials, along with their historicity and metaphors, metamorphose
into Sri Lanka-based artist AnoliPerera’s exquisite works. Perera has been
combining the materials surrounding her, with the situations and experiences
in the social context she lives in.” – PayalKhandelwal, Colour Quotient
Justin
Daraniyagala
‘A philosopher, anthropologist, ethnologist, but first of all an artist, who was a visionary,
unique for his land and for his time’ (Weereratne, 1993, p87)
Richard Gabriel
‘A painter completely devoid of theories, conveying a primitive poetry of
Ceylon with delightful fancy’ – William Graham
George Keyt
‘Classic in thought but modernistic in treatment'
(An “Indian Express” correspondent)
George Claessen
‘The quintessentially calm, deliberate, contemplative artist’ - G. M. Butcher

About The Taprobane Collection

The Taprobane Collection is one of Sri Lanka’s most extensive gathering of paintings and art works. It contains a carefully chosen number of the works of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated artists.

They follow the development of painting in the trail of the years of British colonialism from the latter years of the Nineteenth Century. They came into full flowering in the early Twentieth Century, encouraged initially by Charles Freegrove Winzer, a British educationist who recognized the value of traditional art of the country; the murals and frescoes found on temple walls, and in the sculptures carved in granite. These were found mainly in Anuradhapura (from 543 BC to 1758 AD), Sigiriya in the fifth century, and Polonnaruwa in the twelfth century.

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About The Taprobane Collection

The Taprobane Collection is one of Sri Lanka’s most extensive gathering of paintings and art works. It contains a carefully chosen number of the works of Sri Lanka’s most celebrated artists.

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