George Keyt Archives

Searching for George Keyt-By Uditha Devapriya Source:Island Image Source:Island George Keyt, Sri Lanka’s most celebrated painter, died 30 years ago in 1993. During his life and after his death, he became the subject of several studies by Sri Lankan and foreign scholars. Today his paintings have found their way to some of the biggest art collections in his country, as well as to places like Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Taken together, these paintings represent some of the finest examples of modern art in Sri Lanka and Asia. They have also become symbols of Asian modernism. Born in 1901 in the mountainous region of Kandy, some 75 miles from Sri Lanka’s capital, Colombo, George Keyt hailed from a middle-class family that had become thoroughly Westernised and Anglicised. They belonged to the Burgher community, an ethnic group which traces its descent from the Portuguese and the Dutch. By the 20th century the ...

IN MEMORIAM – By Des Kelly The end of July, this year (2018), should bring back memories of one of Ceylon’s most talented artists of the 20th Century. It was on the 31st July, 1993, that Sri Lankan artist Kalasuri George Keyt passed away after a short illness, at a private nursing home in Colombo. He was 92. V.M.(I believe that it could have been none other than my good friend,Victor Melder, has written this story about G.K.), and I can inform all our eLanka readers that, when it comes to “news from Ceylon”, what Victor does not know about Lanka, generally, is certainly not worth knowing. Anyway, let us leave V.M.(the human encyclopaedia), for the moment, to carry on with the human-interest story of this very famous “Son of Lanka”, on what is the 25th anniversary of his passing. George Keyt was born in Kandy on ...