Jai Zharotia was born in 1945 His birthplace is New Delhi He was known for paintings, ceramics, drawings, sculptures, and poetry He pursued Fine arts at the Delhi College of Art He was an art teacher at the Bal Bhavan before becoming a lecturer at Alma Mater in 1974 In 2005, he became the head of the painting department at the same university 

 

The painter was a recipient of the Sahitya Kala Parishad Award and the National Award of the Lalit Kala Akademi His work was showcased in the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, Lalit Kala Akademi, and Sahitya Kala Parishad He loves to be involved in children’s educational projects as an educationist He illustrated short stories of Nirmal Verma and Bertold Brecht He also wrote poetry in Hindi He depicted clowns, jugglers, and puppeteers which reveals his empathy for the tragicomic characters  

 

Zharotia did not desire to paint only things that lie within the realms of comprehensible nature but he wanted to be free from all the bondages and limitations that strain him to do just that The painting tests the viewer and plays tricks on our senses He creates every single element in his painting that undergoes a constant process of reconstruction and reinterpretation within themselves as well as within the confines of our minds His paper’s works are mixed media most of the time, combining tempera and pencils with watercolors His paintings also consist of surreal two-color backgrounds, and even the play of light and shadow he uses in them is not confined by any physical laws, just like the subject of his works 

 

Zharotia described Luqman Ali’s character as possessing the quality of duality of life, the friction between good and evil, escapes, and surrender Luqman was a fictional character, invented by the poet Soumitra Mohan 

 

He explained that life is a myth, and there are so many questions inside you that you can't express in words, so they find an expression in art in the form of imaginary images He further continues, the two most important things in art are the idea and how you put it on paper so that the image becomes important

 

He died due to cardiac arrest on 27th March 2021 in New Delhi