Renowned poster designer Diwakar Karkare dies at 81

Iconic poster designer Diwakar Karkare died at 9:20 pm on Monday. The news of his death was announced by his son, Dr Umesh Karkare, the next day.

Born in 1930, Karkare studied at the Sir JJ School of Art and went on to become one of the most prolific and respected artists associated with the Hindi film industry, with over 1,000 posters to his credit. Karkare's career took off after he designed a poster for Bimal Roy's Benazir (1964) while his last work was the poster of K Vishwanath's Eeshwar (1989).

He had a long rapport with filmmaker Yash Chopra and worked on a number of iconic posters for Amitabh Bachchan blockbusters such as Sholay (1975) and Silsila (1981). Karkare was known for his signature technique involving palette knives, which he began using in Waqt (1965).

He went on to establish Studio Diwakar and became the industry’s highest-paid designer, charging a whopping Rs50,000 for Manmohan Desai's Mard (1985). In fact, the legendary showman Raj Kapoor had so much faith in Karkare’s abilities that he gave his go-ahead for the printing of the posters of Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) without taking as much as a glance at the artist's design.

But eventually, as the times changed, demand dwindled for Karkare’s posters, and he retired to Pune in the 1990s. “There was no creativity in it," Karkare told journalist Anupama Chopra about the change in poster design in a 2010 interview.

“These are not artists," he had added. "None of them has learnt art. They are all merely doing a mechanical job.”

The artist also commented that once he left Mumbai, he was forgotten. “I believe that I helped to establish Yash Chopra but when they had a function to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Yash Raj Films, they didn't even invite me. So I don't regret losing touch,” he had said.