P.Mansaram (who preferred to write his name without a space) graduated from art school in Bombay (Mumbai) and furthered his studies in the Netherlands before immigrating to Canada in 1966. In the Netherlands he became interested in collage as a way to bring together disparate media from paint, print, and photography, as well as images drawn from Indian and Western visual cultures. In Canada, P.Mansaram forged a collaborative relationship with media theorist Marshall McLuhan and produced a range of innovative collage work before it became more widely used among Canadian artists. Until 1989 P.Mansaram taught art in Hamilton, while continuing to exhibit in Canada and in India. His work is in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum.

Image: P.Mansaram, Boxers at the Entrance of a Toronto Subway, 1976, paper cut-out on a gelatin silver print, 28 x 35.5 cm, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto.

For further reading, see:

Battacharyya, Monolina. “P.Mansaram.” Building Cultural Legacies Hamilton, 2019. buildingculturallegacies.ca/artist/p-mansaram/.

Dewan, Deepali. “P.Mansaram: A Canadian Artist in and of the World.” Canadian Art, March 16, 2021. canadianart.ca/essays/p-mansaram/.

Kuskis, Alexander. “Mansaram and Marshal McLuhan: Collaboration in Collage Art.” Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies, December 6, 2017. dx.doi.org/10.17742/IMAGE.MA.8.3.3.