Search results for: 'Flower and Fire The Life and'

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Henry Singleton’s The Last Effort and Fall of Tippoo Sultaun belongs to a genre known as history painting: the depiction of important historical events, usually on a large scale, as if they were playing out in front of one’s eyes. Author and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor and art historian Giles Tillotson explain the lively imagination deployed in Singleton’s painting that depicts the British assault on Seringapatam and the killing of its ruler, Tipu Sultan—himself the source of so many stories that it was difficult to unravel the truth from the many falsities spun by the biased colonial administration and historians of the time.

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One of the most distinguished families in Bengal, the Tagores exercised unparalleled influence over the cultural landscape of the region. The Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), and two of his nephews, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) and Abanindranath Tagore (1871 - 1951) were recognised as India’s National Art Treasure artists. Sunayani Devi (1875 -1962), their sister, is regarded as one of modern India’s first women painters known by name. Her lyrical paintings and embroideries often looked inward to an imagined world of fables and myths. At the turn of the twentieth century, we see Abanindranath emerging as the founder of the Bengal School as he envisioned a new Indian art that was free of colonial influence, rooted in pan-Asianism. Gaganendranath, on the other hand, was a prolific satirist and cartoonist, who imagined new forms and perspectives inspired by Cubism. Together they formed the influential Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1907, while Rabindranath’s school and university at Santiniketan would continue to shape modern art in Bengal for generations to come.

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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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An experiential learning and apprenticeship programme for high school students in collaboration with arts education organisations, offering them a first-hand experience of working in a museum, learning about the art and history, and translating their learnings to develop museum experiences for their peers.

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This exemplary themed exhibition at DAG’s booth at the India Art Fair 2018 was a masterclass in Indian art dedicated to the nine National Treasure artists. This declaration in the decade of the 1970s was intended to identify artists whose contribution had national significance. Even though the selection appears arbitrary and argumentative, the nine artists cannot be faulted for the quality of their work and the role they played in segueing the pre-independence freedom movement with their role and responsibility as artists. Nandalal Bose Sailoz Mookherjea Abanindranath Tagore Jamini Roy Amrita Sher-Gil Rabindranath Tagore Gagnendranath Tagore Nicholas Roerich Raja Ravi Varma

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Have you wondered how people looked at paintings and photographs in the nineteenth century? For DAG’s annual Heritage Festival ‘The City as a Museum’, we explored various aspects of the city’s visual culture. As we are about to launch the DAG Journal let us revisit the walk co-led by Sarbajit Mitra and Amreeta Das at the Uttarpara Jaykrishna public library to delve into the periodical archive and trace the evolution of printed pictures in India. Flipping through the pages of these periodicals offered glimpses into the everyday habits of consuming art—from simple wood-cut and lithograph illustrations, to full plate colour reproductions of paintings and photographs, artist albums, and exquisitely ornate typography.

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Among all attempts by foreign artists to present a complete view of India, none is so focused on people as the work of François Baltazard Solvyns, who lived in Calcutta for a decade starting in 1791. While picking up odd jobs, he embarked on an ambitious project to produce a comprehensive survey of ‘the manners, customs, and dresses, of the Hindus’. The first edition contained 250 hand-coloured etchings and was published by Solvyns between 1796 and 1799.

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Artists have often formulated their theories and observations to analyse and become aware of the cognitive modes of art making, and to associate with broader contemporaneous art movements. These manifestos become a window into an artist’s process. Prabhakar Barwe’s seminal treatise, <i>Kora Canvas</I> (The Blank Canvas, 1989), exemplifies his deep understanding of the fundamental elements of art and keen observations of nature and his surroundings.

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Born in 1902 in Tripura, Ramendranath Chakravorty went to the Government College of Art in Calcutta in 1919 but left it in 1921 to join the newly founded Kala Bhavana at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Soon after graduation, he began his teaching career, first at Kalashala at Andhra National Art Gallery in Machilipatnam, and then at Kala Bhavana. He then joined Government School of Art, Calcutta, as a teacher in 1929, when Mukul Dey, the pioneer of dry point etching in India, was its principal. In 1943-46, Chakravorty was the school’s officiating principal when he set up its graphics department. Eventually, he became the school principal in 1949. Learn More

The fifth edition in the Manifestations series continues the tradition of showcasing the very best of Indian modern art. Seventy-five artists feature in Manifestations 5, bringing together the country’s best known and most established modern artists. To reduce the work of one whole century (give or take a few decades more or less) could be flawed, for this most dynamic period in Indian art history covers many genres, styles, mediums, and influences, and is difficult to paraphrase, especially in the absence of a theme for the collection. It is for this reason that the selection has to be incisive, open to change till the very end, where the addition, or deletion, can change the contextual bird’s eye-view we hope to provide in every series. The exhibition is accompanied by our traditional publication that helps to create a comprehensive understanding about the exhibition’s curatorial decisions. A. H. Muller Altaf Ambadas Amit Ambalal Amitava Arpita Singh Avinash Chandra Badri Narayan Bhupen Khakhar Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Bireswar Sen C. Douglas Chintamani Kar Chittaprosad D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose Himmat Shah Indra Dugar J. C. Seal J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Panicker K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni Krishen Khanna Kshitindranath Majumdar L. Munuswamy Lalu Prasad Shaw Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Nandalal Bose Navjot Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Prabhakar Barwe Prodosh Das Gupta Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Rameshwar Broota Ramkinkar Baij Rekha Rodwittiya S. H. Raza S. L. Haldankar Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Surendran Nair V. S. Gaitonde Vasudha Thozhur Ved Nayar Viswanadhan Vivan Sundaram Zarina Hashmi

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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.

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