The Purushottam Public Trust Scholarships
SCHOLARSHIPS
As an important form of Contemporary and Modern Art, Graphic Printmaking is unique and exhaustive, expensive and laborious to practice. The Purushottam Annual Merit Award for Printmaking encourages artists to continue this art form through monetary support as well as offering a platform for them to showcase their work. We hope to play a small role by helping talented budding artists, especially print-makers. The core objective is to provide initial momentum to a deserving artist as he/she leaves the cocooned existence of a university and embarks on a professional journey.
One of the main initiatives of the Trust is, therefore, to offer scholarships to new talent in the filed of print making, and we offer scholarships and a platform for exposure to them.
In alignment with this, every year, since 2014, the Purushottam Public Trust has awarded an annual merit award to a student in the field of print-making.
This is executed under the aegis of the Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts and the Head of the Department of Graphics at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Vadodara, Gujarat - the premier institution of contemporary Indian art in the country. This annual merit award is conferred on the student securing highest marks in the final examinations of the Graphic Arts Course (Practical). The awardee receives a monetary award of Rupees One Lac, as well as the opportunity to showcase his/her works at the end of the year at a premier art gallery in Vadodara.
The Purushottam Public Trust awarded its Annual Merit Scholarship for the year 2024 to Manonita Karar.
2022 B.V.A in Printmaking, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata
2024 M.V.A in Printmaking, Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda
Manonita Karar is a visual artist whose practice explores the intersection of introspection, emotion, and metaphysical inquiry that started through the enduring medium of printmaking but has taken on its own form as she inches beyond the graphic arts practice with her experimental take, exploring various materials to create more tactile landscapes – physically and emotionally.
With a foundational degree in illustration from Rabindra Bharati University and postgraduate studies in Graphic Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University, she brings both technical proficiency and conceptual depth to her work. She specialised in traditional printmaking techniques such as woodcut, drypoint, and etching – mediums she engages with now not just as tools, but as tactile collaborators in her creative process.
Manonita Karar’s visual language is shaped by her deep engagement with the self, in part by the evolving environments she inhabits and her work stands out for its ability to articulate personal and emotional complexity while inviting viewers into a shared space of contemplation. As an artist deeply rooted in process, she treats each print as a site of transformation, where internal chaos is methodically distilled into poetic form.