Lancelot Ribeiro

Lanceloté José Belarmino Ribeiro (28 November 1933 – 25 December 2010) was an Expressionist painter, best known for his experiments with polyvinyl acetate and oil paints, the forerunner of modern acrylic paints. According to The Independent, he is considered to have been at "the vanguard of the influx of Indian artists to Britain."

Early life Lanceloté José Belarmino Ribeiro was born in Bombay, British India (now Mumbai, India) on 28 November 1933 to Goan Catholic parents, accountant João José Fernando Flores Ribeiro and his dressmaker wife Lilia Maria Cecilia de Souza (née Antunes). He was the half-brother of artist F. N. Souza through Lilia, who married João after her first husband, F. N. Souza's father, died. Ribeiro moved to London in 1950, living with his brother while studying accountancy. He abandoned his career as an accountant when he attended classes at St. Martin's School of Art between 1951 and 1953. He served in the Royal Air Force at Dumfries in Scotland, then returned to Bombay. After working with Life Insurance Corporation, he began working professionally as a painter in 1958.

Ribeiro’s output over six decades of work was wide-ranging and experimental in medium, style, and form. His experimentation with polyvinyl acetate (PVA) positioned him as “a godfather to generations of artists using acrylics as an alternative to oils” (The Times, 2011).

With fellow painters, he co-founded the Indian Painters Collective, UK (IPC) in 1963, the first informal body of its kind outside of India. Over its 25-year history, the IPC advocated for better representation of artists from the subcontinent, eventually evolving into Indian Artists UK (IAUK) in 1978/79.

Influence and critical reception The Independent placed Ribeiro at "the vanguard of the influx of Indian artists to Britain." He rebelled against fashions, fiercely critical of those he saw as following the mainstream. In 1972, describing his own artistic practice for the Commonwealth Institute, he reflected on the impulses which drove his work, a sentiment that could equally be used to convey a lifelong philosophy: “I could go on endlessly to produce painting after painting – interesting perhaps – but somewhat meaningless and self-plagiarizing.”

Career Ribeiro's creative life spanned half a century, during which time he became known for a "huge body" In 1958, he began painting professionally. Ribeiro died in 2010 in London.

Legacy Ribeiro died in London on 25 December 2010, aged 77. He left an artistic legacy of artwork as well as extensive critical and poetic writings. His creative life spanned half a century, and he left what has been described as a "huge body" of figurative and abstract work.

On 28 November 2024, Google celebrated his 91st birthday with a Google Doodle.

Role of acrylics The Times of London acknowledges Ribeiro's role as an "acclaimed Indian artist who pioneered the use of acrylics in the 1960s, producing a brilliancy of color in his expressionistic works". The paper talks of Ribeiro's "increasing impatience" by the 1960s over the time it took for oils to dry, as also its "lack of brilliance in its color potential." He took to the new synthetic plastic bases that commercial paints were beginning to use, and soon got help from manufacturers like ICI, Courtaulds and Geigy. The companies supplied him samples of their latest paints in quantities that he was using three decades later, according to the paper. Initially, the firms thought the PVA compounds would not be needed in commercially viable quantities. But they quickly recognized the potential demand and "so Ribeiro became the godfather of generations of artists using acrylics as an alternative to oils."