Shree Aurobindo once said: “Technique is only the means of expression. One does not write merely to use beautiful words, or paint for the sole sake of line and colour; there is something that one is trying through these means to express or discover.”

India abounds in techniques as well as in subjects or themes. Hence for true portrayal or expression, the artist has to select correctly his medium and technique so as to convey adequately the subject matter.

Mr. N.S. Bendre has specially endeavoured to learn the current techniques by visiting Government Schools of Art and private art institutions all over the country. He has developed a comparative and critical faculty and has ample choice of techniques to suit the treatment of his subjects.

This is the secret of his art, by which he is able to achieve emotional sensitiveness in his pictures by appropriate choice of colour, medium and techniques.

Bendre is undoubtedly a versatile artist. He is descriptive at times, representational at other times; he may be naturalistic in one picture, and purely romantic in another. He is always anxious to see a new work and how it is executed, and will borrow or invent a formula to paint a particular type of subject. From his paintings one can perceive his exceptional grasp of form and content and his effortless skill.

Bendre is undoubtedly a versatile artist. He is descriptive at times, representational at other times; he may be naturalistic in one picture, and purely romantic in another. He is always anxious to see a new work and how it is executed, and will borrow or invent a formula to paint a particular type of subject. From his paintings one can perceive his exceptional grasp of form and content and his effortless skill.

Bendre will choose to paint anything—it may be a temple in South Canara, or a tea stall in Kulu Valley, or a sea plunderer of Chanchia or passengers at a railway station.

He is lucky to have as his partner in life Mrs. Mohana Bendre who is also an artist. They jointly exhibited their works in 1945. Mr. Karl Khandalawala, paying a tribute to him at his one-man-show, said, ”The finest one-man-show ever exhibited by a Bombay artist, with such high sense of colour and clarity of expression.”

Born at Indore in1910, Bendre was educated at the Indore School and obtained the Government art diploma in 1933 in Bombay. He was President of the Art Society of India for one year.

- G. Venkatachalam, Present-Day Painters of India, p. 7, Bombay, 1950