South Asian Pulse

Press Release : Winners of Clint Memorial International Painting Competition Announced

Press Release

Winners of Clint Memorial International Painting Competition Announced
Children from Bulgaria and Bangladesh among top five

Thiruvananthapuram/New Delhi, Oct 25: Children from Bulgaria and Bangladesh are among the top five winners of an international painting competition conducted by Kerala Tourism in memory of the child prodigy Edmund Thomas Clint.




Anujath Sindhu Vinaylal from Thrissur in Kerala won the first prize in the competition and Irtiza Anika Haqe Probonti of Bangladesh came second. The third prize was shared between Viara Pencheva of Bulgaria, Meenakshi Nair J from Kottayam, Kerala and Meghna Unnikrishnan from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Winners of 20 consolation prizes and 100 certificates of appreciation have also been announced.

The Clint Memorial International Painting Competition for children in the age group of 4-15 was launched in January this year. Born in Kochi, Clint had drawn worldwide attention by creating more than 25,000 drawings and paintings as a child before he passed away in 1983 one month short of his seventh birthday.

The online competition received 4,350 entries from 40 countries. The theme was Kerala and the state tourism department had provided two e-books — one on the life of Clint and the other on Kerala — to all the participants.

Winners were selected by a jury, headed by renowned painter-journalist-writer and the Chairman of Kerala Lalit Kala Academy Shri K A Francis, and consisting of art critic-writer-curator Shri M L Johny, painter-writer Smt. Mimi Radhakrishnan, artist Shri Anandamoy Banerjee and sculptor Shri George Martin.

The committee selected the 125 winners from a long list of 1,000 long entries. Of the 20 consolation prizes, four went to participants from outside India, six from Kerala and ten from various other parts of India. There were also prizes for two volunteers who brought in maximum number of participants.

Kerala topped the number of entries with 1,125. A total of 2,800 paintings were received from other states of India while 425 paintings came from 36 foreign countries. Vietnam had the highest number of submissions from outside India, at 95.

Kerala Tourism Minister Shri A P Anil Kumar, who congratulated the winners, said: “We were overwhelmed by the response of children from across the world to the competition. The fact that thousands of children from diverse regions drew paintings on Kerala is a display of creative solidarity among the global youth.”

"Clint was a genius who created a world of images, many representing the cultural landscape of Kerala, for the people to see," said Shri Suman Billa, Secretary, Kerala Tourism.

Kerala Tourism had also made two short films on the life of Clint and on the competition for preparing the participants. The films received a whopping one million views on YouTube and other online platforms within four months of their launch.

"The competition generated massive interest online worldwide," said Kerala Tourism Director Shri P I Sheik Pareeth. "We are thankful to the participants and their families for their enthusiasm in knowing about Clint and the state where he lived and painted.”

Kerala Tourism had received limited rights to use 30 of Clint's paintings for the competition, from his parents, who had extended their whole hearted support to the international event. Clint's parents, M T Joseph and Chinnamma Joseph, were present at the launch of the short film on Clint, titled 'God's Own Child From God's Own Country'.

The Kerala Tourism website (www.keralatourism.org), where the entries had to be registered, witnessed 3.2 million visits and 11.7 million page views, out of which 1.69 million were for pages related to Clint during January-September 2014. Visitors spent 18,821 hours on pages related to Clint alone. The same period in the previous year had witnessed 7.53 million page views and 2.3 million visits to the site.

ENDS