K. Siva Prasada Reddy

A Master Storyteller in Kalamkari
Master artisan K. Siva Prasada Reddy transforms cloth into elaborate visual narratives through the centuries-old tradition of hand-painted Kalamkari. Born in 1956 in Tanguturu, a village in Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh, he first worked the land alongside his family before an advertisement in a daily newspaper led him toward a professional path in art in 1978.

Over the following decades his work grew in ambition and scale — culminating in a single Kalamkari piece 47 feet wide and 11 feet high, containing roughly 2,000 hand-painted figures across 210 illustrated episodes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Bhagavatam, which entered the Limca Book of Records. He has since founded a Kalakshetram — a dedicated studio and training school — to pass the technique on to a new generation of Kalamkari artists.