Search results for: 'Paintings for sake'

The role of popular prints in providing a visual lexicon to India’s freedom struggle—carrying images of its vital players and events to the farthest corners of the country—received a tremendous boost with this Paula Sengupta-curated exhibition at Drishyakala, Red Fort, Delhi, in 2019, a joint collaboration between DAG and the Archaeological Survey of India. Learn More

At the turn of the twentieth century, Abanindranath Tagore asked himself if the emerging artists of modern India should continue to paint in the manner of their European colonizers; or was there a new path waiting to be forged? His answers led him to envision a pan-Asian cultural identity, spanning traditions from Persia to Japan, and culminating in a ‘new “Indian” art.’ Regarded as the founder of the Bengal School, Abanindranath left an unparalleled legacy both in terms of his own diverse body of work, and through his pupils, like Nandalal Bose, who shaped the contours of art across the subcontinent in the twentieth century.

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Ghare Baire was a museum-exhibition showcasing over 200 years of art in Bengal. Presented by DAG in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Archaeological Survey of India, the exhibition was housed at the historic Currency Building, across twelve galleries featuring over 700 artworks. The exhibition was the largest showcase of Bengal Art, presenting a panoramic view of the evolution of art in a region that has been critical to the development of Indian modern art. The exhibition starts with the arrival of the travelling European artists at a time of exchange between Bengal and the world. This confluence of cultures stimulated new visual languages as we see in the Kalighat pat,  the Bengal School, and the subsequent emergence of artists who fearlessly and freely experimented with form and subject, reshaping the trajectory of art in India.

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DAG has been a pioneer in curating exhibitions that have historical significance. These have ranged from themes around different genres and art movements to artist retrospectives as well as engagements with forgotten masters. Most exhibitions are sourced from its own inventory and in recent years DAG has begun to explore eighteenth and nineteenth century art and artists in addition to its presence as a stakeholder of twentieth century art. Exhibitions are routinely organised at its galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai, and New York, as well as in collaboration with museums and other institutions. All exhibitions are accompanied by well researched and designed books, adding considerably to the documentation of Indian art history.

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DAG invited leading historians of Delhi, Swapna Liddle and Rana Safvi, to explore our archives collection. The items they found there include numerous photographs of the three durbars, taken by prominent photographers of the day. They also include many other objects relating to the durbars, from portraits and medals, to maps and official guidebooks, and to tickets and programmes. Historians in the past have analysed the ideology of the Delhi durbars, but never before has such a collection of the material culture of these events been brought together for display.

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Prabhakar Barwe (1936-95) could well have ended up a theoretician whose book 'Kora Canvas' (Blank Canvas) was a manifesto that established the multi-dimensional relationship between an artist, the object on which he paints, and his subjects. That he was not just an intellectual scholar but an artist whose work speaks for him, is evident through a range of works in which Barwe dissects our understanding of the world and how we view it. Taking commonplace objects and our perception of their existence in the space they occupy, he shifts the dialogue to a point of discomfiture that makes us question our understanding of them. Using scale, discordant juxtapositions, and displacements, he reimagines the everyday in a manner that is thought-provoking, even provocative, as alternate realities—whether perceived or imagined.

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A visit to an antique furniture warehouse and the former home of historian Sir Jadunath Sarkar with Professor Rosinka Chaudhuri, as we trace the Swadeshi influence on our living spaces, and the transformation of furniture design.

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An online cook along with Bong Eats and Pritha Sen, a food historian to delve into the history of dishes, made by our grandmothers and mothers, that form a large part of the art that we experience in our day-to-day life, in the kitchen and on our plates.

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A guided walk by urban history researcher Sujaan Mukherjee, uncovering the forgotten histories of monuments and sites around the Indian Museum, and their changing fates after Independence.

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How did the multiple trajectories of visual arts develop in the subcontinent? Where did they originate and how did their paths converge? Drishyakala offers a sweeping journey into the heterogenous histories of visual arts in India, from the first European travelling artists who drew landscapes to popular prints of the earliest woodcuts and lithographs evolving into the thriving advertising visuals of the 20th century. The exhibition is broadly divided into four categories, each exploring an unique area of development—the art of portraiture through photography and painting, oriental sceneries drawn by European travelling artists, popular prints from the late eighteenth century to post-independence and artworks of the nine National Treasure Artists. Together, these sections give brief glimpses into the dizzying variety of forms, styles and languages of South Asian art.

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The Delhi Durbars were a series of coronation events held by the British in India which formally declared the British monarch as the Emperor or Empress of India. They took place thrice—first, in 1887, acknowledging Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, followed by one in 1903, for King Edward VII, and finally in 1911 for King George V, which saw the monarch’s attendance in person.

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