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The idea of primitivism centres on the wish to identify with, or respond to, elements of a society that are deemed ‘primitive’. In artistic terms, it is about rejecting realism, simplifying technique and reducing the formal means of expression to a ‘primitive’ state. The term itself is borrowed from discussions of Western art, where high-profile examples include the images of Tahiti and its people made in the 1890s by Paul Gauguin, and responses to African sculpture by Pablo Picasso in 1906-09. The second thread of primitivism—the reduction of formal means—is best exemplified by the ‘cut-outs’ made by Henri Matisse in the 1940s.

Chittaprosad (1915 – 1978) was an artist of the people. A firm believer in the power of political art to bring tangible change in society, he is remembered for political cartoons and caricatures lampooning the ruling elite while championing the cause of the working class.

He was also a dedicated journalist working for the Communist Party of India (CPI) and was sent by the party to document the effects of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943 in Bengal’s villages and towns. He would come back with harrowing stories and sketches of hunger and death and publish them in the CPI’s journal People’s War, something that would prove to be extremely important in the face of British censorship on news about the famine.

Post-Independence, Chittaprosad distanced himself from the CPI due to ideological differences and moved to the outskirts of Bombay. He continued registering protest through his art but focussed increasingly on art for children. He setup a puppet studio, Khela-ghar and created beautiful retellings of epics and folk tales in print.

Sunayani Devi picked up a paintbrush in 1905 when she was thirty years old while supervising her kitchen duties, self-taught, but with enough talent to attract the critical attention of Stella Kramrisch who organised an exhibition of her paintings in Germany in 1927. It was in her worthy footsteps that India’s women artists followed. Devayani Krishna was born five years after Sunayani Devi began painting; Amrita Sher-Gil already had a career in Paris by the time India’s first art school-trained woman artist, Ambika Dhurandhar, earned her diploma in Bombay. B. Prabha followed next, her work reflecting the realities of the marginalised in a piquant language. By the time Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi, both born a decade before Independence, established their careers, women were joining art schools in greater numbers, validating their practice not on the basis of their gender but on its context. Anupam Sud Devayani Krishna Gogi Saroj Pal Latika Katt Madhvi Parekh Mrinalini Mukherjee Navjot Rekha Rodwittiya Shobha Broota Zarina Hashmi

The city was consolidated over the course of the eighteenth century, and its access to global trade routes helped it grow over the following centuries as well, leading some to describe it as the 'door of the East with its Face to the West'. How did European artists view this growing city?

The 2015 edition of the India Art fair saw DAG securing a lavish booth across two different spaces spread over 11,000 sq. ft. Likened to a museum (albeit a temporary one), the gallery presented a show of close to one thousand artworks that consisted of both paintings and sculptures. The thematically curated exhibition consisted of nine categories: pre-modern art, the Bengal school, academic realism, the Bombay Progressive artists, high modernism, the Baroda School and Group 1890, the Cholamandal artists, tantra and sculptures. This categorically-placed collection successfully attempted to showcase the dynamic range of Indian art over two hundred years. A special sculpture gallery was set up in a covered courtyard and featured the largest sculpture in India—by K. S. Radhakrishnan. Pre-Moderns Early Bengal Kalighat Pat Company School Popular Prints Birth of Modernism M. R. Achrekar Almelkar Radha Charan Bagchi Richard Barron Pestonji E. Bomanji Atul Bose Sakti Burman William Carpenter Jogen Chowdhury Devraj Dakoji Thomas Daniell John Deschamps M. V. Dhurandhar Indra Dugar J. P. Gangooly Olinto Ghilardi S. L. Haldankar K. K. Hebbar Benjamin Hudson D. C. Joglekar Prahlad C. Karmakar J. A. Lalkaka B. C. Law Hemendranath Mazumdar M. Mali H. Muller Ramaswamy Naidu M. K. Parandekar William Parker Prema Pathare V. B. Pathare M. F. Pithawalla Portraiture (Anonymous) Thomas Prinsep Abalall Rahiman ‘Ravi Varma School’ Kisory Roy Baburao Sadwelkar N. R. Sardesai Bireswar Sen Lalit Mohan Sen Sushil Chandra Sen S. G. Thakar Singh Satish Chandra Sinha L. N. Taskar Raja Ravi Varma Revivalism and Beyond Radha Charan Bagchi Bengal School (Anonymous) Nandalal Bose Ramendranath Chakravorty M. A. R. Chughtai Haren Das Sunayini Devi 438 Mukul Dey Surendranath Ganguly Asit Kumar Haldar Chintamoni Kar Kshitindranath Majumdar Indu Rakshit Prosanto Roy Bisnhupada Roychowdhury D. P. Roy Chowdhury Abanindranath Tagore Sarada Charan Ukil Ramgopal Vijaivargiya Jamini Roy Santiniketan: A New Expressionism Ramkinkar Baij Nandalal Bose Benode Behari Mukherjee The Bengal Famine in Art Gobardhan Ash Ramkinkar Baij Chittaprosad Somnath Hore Bengal Modernist Calcutta Group Gopal Ghose Hemanta Misra Prankrishna Pal Paritosh Sen Sunil Madhav Sen Calcutta Painters Nikhil Biswas Bijan Chowdhury Jogen Chowdhury Prokash Karmakar Rabin Mondal Society of Contemporary Artists Bikash Bhattacharjee Sunil Das Shyamal Dutta Ray Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne Lalu Prasad Shaw Lone Stars: Other Bengal Modernists Amalnath Chakladhar Partha Pratim Deb Nemai Ghosh Somnath Hore Sudhir Ranjan Khastgir Sailoz Mookherjea Gaganendranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore Rise of Modernsim K. H. Ara S. K. Bakre Bal Chhabda H. A. Gade V. S. Gaitonde M. F. Husain Krishen Khanna Ram Kumar Tyeb Mehta Akbar Padamsee S. H. Raza Mohan Samant F. N. Souza A Modern Vernacular Baroda School N. S. Bendre Devraj Dakoji Shanti Dave Bhupen Khakhar Dhruva Mistry Haku Shah Nilima Sheikh K. G. Subramanyan Vivan Sundaram Group 1890 Ambadas Jyoti Bhatt Eric Bowen Jeram Patel Raghav Kaneria Himmat Shah Gulammohammed Sheikh J. Swaminathan Alternate Sensibilities Discourses in Feminism Arpana Caur Nalini Malani Navjot Gogi Saroj Pal Anupam Sud A Language of Minimalism Zarina Hashmi Nasreen Mohammedi The Topsy Turvy World of Magic Realism Amit Ambalal Sakti Burman Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Ranbir Singh Kaleka Sanat Kar P. Khemraj Anjolie Ela Menon New Delhi Modernists Amitava Manjit Bawa Rameshwar Broota Shobha Broota Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Manu Parekh Ved Nayar Ramachandran G. R. Santosh Arpita Singh Silpi Chakra Group Dhanraj Bhagat Avinash Chandra Satish Gujral Bishamber Khanna Devayani Krishna Kanwal Krishna K. S. Kulkarni C. Sanya Mumbai Modernists Altaf Prabhakar Barwe Chittaprosad K. K. Hebbar George Keyt Gieve Patel Prabha Raiba V. Nageshkar Jehangir Sabavala Laxman Shreshtha Region and Identity Cholamandal Artists’ Village J. Sultan Ali Reddappa Naidu Akkitham Narayanan K. C. S. Paniker K. Ramanujam M. Senathipathi S. G. Vasudev V. Viswanadhan Modernists of the South K. M. Adimoolam R. B. Bhaskaran S. Dhanapal P. V. Janakiram L. Munuswamy P. Santhanraj Laxman Pai K. Laxma Goud Badri Narayan G. Ravinder Reddy Krishna Reddy P. T. Reddy S. Krishnaswamy Srinivasulu Thota Vaikuntam Sacred and Sensual Neo-Tantra as a Modern Conceit Jyoti Bhatt Sunil Das Biren De K. V. Haridasan Jeram Patel Sohan Qadri P. T. Reddy G. R. Santosh Erotic Art Ramkinkar Baij Sunil Das K. Laxma Goud M. F. Husain Ranbir Singh Kaleka Prokash Karmakar K. S. Kulkarni Laxman Pai P. T. Reddy G. R. Santosh F. N. Souza Modernism in Indian Sculpture Ramkinkar Baij S. K. Bakre P. Roy Chowdhury Jogen Chowdhury Sankho Chaudhuri Prodosh Das Gupta M. Davierwala Jacob Epstein Tarak Garai Bipin Behari Goswami Satish Gujral Asit Kumar Haldar Dhruva Mistry Mrinalini Mukherjee S. Nandagopal Navjot Nagji Patel K. S. Radhakrishnan S. H. Raza Jamini Roy Himmat Shah Prabhas Sen B. Vithal Other Sculptors

He was the colossus of the Indian art world whose reign over twentieth-century modern art remains unparalleled. M. F. Husain (1913-2011) was the face of Indian modernism and owned it completely. Having started out as a painter of billboards in Bombay, he became its unchallenged monarch as a member of the influential Progressive Artists’ Group in 1947. He claimed the first National Award instituted by the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1955, and went on to become India’s most celebrated artist. In a practice that spanned over seventy years, Husain was playful, experimental, provocative, controversial—but never mediocre.

In the articulation of twentieth century art, where does one place Altaf Mohamedi? That question has probably troubled more curators than we realise. Altaf, who studied art in London before returning to Bombay (now Mumbai) was following in the footsteps of his elder sister and artist Nasreen Mohamedi, but that is where all similarities ended. Where Nasreen was an abstract, sparse artist who created a distinctive language using, for most part, rigid, inflexible lines that nevertheless sang on the paper over which they were made, Altaf’s work was intensely political and social.