Charcoal, oils, copper and silk threads are like putty in SG Vasudev's hands. He can bend them to his will, whether it is beating copper sheets with a hundred different tools or dyeing threads to match the colour in his brain. His retrospective, which is currently NGMA-hopping, and is in the city after Bengaluru, has to sum up 60 years of his experimentation with different mediums. This includes 28 copper reliefs, 37 tapestries and 300 paintings and drawings. But, he says, "You can't say that I have arrived. I think I'll be ready with another retrospective in 10 years. I have an itch to do something different. If you don't have that, you're a dead person."

Like most artists, Vasudev has more to say on the easel than on tape. Which is why his works speak for him. And, what a sophisticated yarn they tell. One painting, Fantasy, is a quasi-abstract vision in cream and grey. It's dotted with mountains, rivers, dogs and symbols, in a style reminiscent of tribal paintings, but rendered by a master. A series of copper reliefs, with trees chiselled on them, is treated differently each time: either the leaves look like paisley, or the fruits look like Saturn, or the branches look like tree rings. "At one point, I questioned myself, whether I'm going to follow Western art or break [the mould]. For nearly two years in the '60s, I didn't see any Western art. I kept sculptures from Bastar, Tanjore paintings and Mysore School paintings in my house. So what happens is, every morning when you get up, you see them and somewhere they start influencing your mind. And, because of my interest in Kannada literature and poetry, it brought in new [ideas] in my paintings, like the folk and traditional art of Karnataka. Once your base is changed, you can continue with it."