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March to Freedom re-interprets the well-known story of the Indian freedom struggle and anticolonial movement through works of art and some historic artefacts. Drawn from the collections of DAG, they range from eighteenth and nineteenth century European paintings and prints, to lesser known works by Indian artists that merit greater recognition, alongside some iconic pieces. Rather than following the usual chronological path, the story is structured around eight themes. Each represents one arena, or stage, on which the anti-colonial struggle took place, to expand the story beyond politics, politicians, and battles (which also feature). Conceived to commemorate and celebrate the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, this visual journey seeks to do more. For even as we remember the struggles, the sacrifices, and the stories, such anniversaries are also occasions for reflection, including upon the scholarship that has developed on South Asian history. Some of the latter may be familiar to academics, or those with special interests. For most of the rest of us, our knowledge of this past is derived in large part from hazy memories of school lessons, which change from one generation to the next, and are influenced by concurrent national politics. We also learn from narratives on offer through public channels or in the media, to mark moments of national remembrance or controversy.

In a career spanning four decades, Amitava’s location as an artist has determined the authority that he brings to his practice. As an artist studying and working in the 1960s, Amitava Das experienced a decade of fragmented locii. The ’60s, the period of his education at the College of Art, was the decade of wars, fiscal difficulty and an uncertain polity in the wake of the death of Jawaharlal Nehru. Further, as a second generation pravasi (non-residing Indian) Bengali, the roiling political violence of West Bengal’s Naxal movement came to him through the filter of poetry, film and art—much as he would have received the existential writing of Camus, Genet and Rilke. Through the 1960s and ’70s, small groups of artists and filmmakers in different pockets in India had a heightened response: the state of the nation found an uncanny echo in the language of modernism, of the artist’s isolation and purity even within a state of uncertainty.

2020 marks a special year in mankind’s history and India’s destiny. Often used in reference to development goals, 2020 has taught us to never take things for granted. While humanity has made major leaps, even conquering outer space, nature has shown us how little we know about it, and how little we appreciate what we have. 2020 has taught us to review our values. We have suffered but also been comforted, and we have learned to acknowledge that irrespective of our joys and sorrows, our triumphs and our failures, the world will not stop, it will go on. Husain Rabin Mondal Santosh Jehangir Sabavala Mohan Samant Swaminathan Paramjit Paramjeet Ramgopal Vijaivargiya Seal Singh Dasgupta Haren Das Shanti Dave Jagadish Dhanapal Dhurandhar Bipin Behari Goswami Laxma Goud George Keyt Ara Nandalal Bose Jyoti Bhatt Natvar Bhavsar Eric Bowen Shobha Broota Avinash Chandra Sanat Chatterjee Shiavax Chavda Hebbar Khemraj Krishen Khanna Walter Langhammer Jeram Patel Aroomogam Pillay Raza Reddy Jamini Roy Vasudev Viswanadhan Manu Madhvi Parekh Laxman Pai Dhirendra Narayan Dharamanarayan.

Radha is painted as a queen in this Early Bengal oil painting, surrounded by her fellow Gopis (cowherds and companions) and Krishna—her divine consort and an incarnation of one of the Hindu trinity—dressed as a sentinel. She sits on her royal throne amid a forest landscape, perhaps recalling her identification as Vrindavaneshwari (goddess of Vrindavan). Going by the small but remarkable details of the jewellery, we can guess that it is the work of an artist trained in the miniature tradition. But does the painting hide other possible secrets?

DAG’s emphasis for the 2019 edition of India Art Fair was a rarity—a selection of works of the kind visitors had not before seen. These included a glass mural by Avinash Chandra, a medium the artist loved but which had never before been shown in India; a large mural by Mrinalini Mukherjee; an artist’s chair by Prabhakar Barwe; evocative works by Hemendranath Mazumdar, Manjit Bawa, and Tyeb Mehta; powerful paintings by F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain, Rabin Mondal, and Krishen Khanna; exemplary abstract paintings by Ram Kumar, Shanti Dave, Sohan Qadri, J. Swaminathan, and G. R. Santosh; and other equally powerful artworks including a double-sided sculpture by Meera Mukherjee.

Avinash Chandra F N Souza G R Santosh Hemendranath Majumdar J Swaminathan Krishen Khanna M F Husain Madhvi Parekh Manjit Bawa Meera Mukherjee Mrinalini Mukherjee Paritosh Sen Prabhakar Barwe Rabin Mondal Ram Kumar S H Raza S K Bakre Shanti Dave Sohan Qadri Tyeb Mehta

In February, Paris' Centre Pompidou--a premier centre for modern art since its construction in 1977--mounted an extensive solo show looking back at S. H. Raza’s career in painting. It represents a historic moment for Indian modern art’s international story as it unfolded over the twentieth century, and also marked Raza's own symbolic return to the place where he stayed for most of his working life. The fertile post-independent period saw cross-cultural connections being forged by Indian artists in Europe and America on their own terms and this show is a testament to Raza’s evolving encounters with land and mythology. The curators, Catherine David and Diane Toubert, spoke to DAG highlighting some of the takeaways from this major retrospective.

The Devi or the female power in Hindu mythology appears in various avatars in our everyday lives—as idols during the puja, on covers of magazines, product labels, calendars and posters. The modern history of visualising the Devi goes back to naturalistic depictions in oil paintings by the Early Bengal artists, which were surpassed in popularity and fame by Raja Ravi Varma and his studio. His representation, however, was regarded as too human-like by artists of the Bengal School in the early twentieth century, who created idealised forms based on a synthesis of classical visual traditions. In the twentieth century, we find artists responding to distinctive traits of the goddess to portray specific aspects of her power, or to convey the artist's own relationship with divinity. Few artists who have turned to Hindu myths have been able to escape the temptation to interpret the female power in their own way, and the diversity in style, medium, and mood is a testament to that.