Search results for: 'From the niche a'

Colonization is perhaps best understood as a process that unfolded over time than as a single historical event. In India and South Asia it began with the East India Company acquiring rights over land in different parts of the country, with the occasional political victories won on the battlefields. Since the Battle of Plassey (1757), their power over legislative and judicial matters grew steadily, backed by a strong military presence. Following the First War of Independence in 1857, the British Crown brought most parts of the Indian subcontinent under its direct rule, continuing to hold power until 1947.

Learn More

The wash technique has come to be associated in India with the art of the Bengal School, but the story of its origins in India takes us back to an era of rich cultural exchanges. In the early twentieth century artists like Abanindranath Tagore were trying to imagine a pan-Asian cultural identity, and they turned for inspiration to traditions from across Persia to Japan. Rabindranath Tagore's friendship with Okakura Kakuzō occasioned the arrival of several Japanese artists in Kolkata, such as Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida Shunsō and Katsuta Shōkin. While the latter found inspiration in the Hindu epics, artists in Bengal adapted techniques that were used by the Japanese, such as the wash technique or the subtle use of ink and brush. Since then, the wash technique has been interpreted widely by individual artists, offering an ethereal quality of light to their works, or, in some cases, like for Gaganendranath Tagore and Prosanto Roy, new possibilities of painting in various shades of darkness.

Learn More

For Shanti Dave, creativity is a consistent and persistent exploration of the word or akshara—a term defined in the Natyashastra as a stroke in musical notes—which he perceives as the source of all creation. Dave’s abstract iconography, beginning in the early 1950s, adapted to modernism, aesthetic continuity and transcultural exchange. He altered, rejected and improvised the archaic image into a resonant form resembling an ancient script.

Learn More

Artist and institution-builder Shuvaprasanna’s residence is located in a leafy corner of Kolkata’s suburban township, Bidhannagar or ‘Salt lake City’, which was envisaged by the former Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy in the late 1950s. Having grown up elsewhere—in College Street, in fact—the artist only moved here in 2002-03 with his family, which included his wife and fellow-artist, Shipra Bhattacharya. In this photo-essay we will learn about Shuvaprasanna’s personal collection and the relationship between his collecting practices and his art-making.

Learn More

For its fourth consecutive outing at Masterpiece London, DAG continued with the tradition of showing artists who had grown in appeal at the city’s truly cross-collecting ‘masterpiece’ fair, but with enough surprises to interest even the most fair-hardened visitor. From a large and vivid G. R. Santosh to a collection of small-sized Bireswar Sen watercolours, the selection was sensitively curated keeping in mind the cosmopolitan nature of London city and the visitors to the fair. Along with the Progressives, the exhibition included one of the finest sculptures created by Adi Davierwalla, remarkable paintings by Tyeb Mehta, Bikash Bhattacharjee, J. Sultan Ali, Avinash Chandra, and Hemen Mazumdar. As always, the emphasis in the booth lay in creating a rarefied visitor experience in which a handful of works allowed visitors to enjoy them at leisure without causing visual fatigue. The response was overwhelming. G. R. SANTOSH BIRESWAR SEN MADHVI PAREKH S. H. RAZA F. N. SOUZA TYEB MEHTA J. SULTAN ALI DHANRAJ BHAGAT BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE AVINASH CHANDRA SHANTI DAVE ADI DAVIERWALLA SATISH GUJRAL HEMEN MAZUMDAR SOHAN QADRI BIREN DE

Learn More

Shobha Broota’s pictorial interpretation of the resonance of classical Indian ragas forms the essence of her celebrated style in which she conveys their subtle variations through minimal use of colours. Born in 1943 in New Delhi in an artistic family that inspired her to study art, Broota obtained a diploma in painting from College of Art, New Delhi, in 1964. Learn More

One of the nine National Treasure artists of India, Russia-born Nicholas Roerich was not just a painter but a stage designer for ballets, an explorer, writer, and philosopher. As a painter, he is best remembered for his ethereal paintings of the mist-laden and wispy Himalayas, done mostly in tempera or oil. These paintings remain some of the best works celebrating the mighty mountain range. Learn More

Manifestations, DAG’s signature exhibition showcasing the very best of modern Indian art, appears this winter in its landmark tenth edition, bringing together seventy-five of India’s best-known and most established modernists. The artworks are grouped by genre into the categories of mythology, landscape, still-life, figurative, narrative and abstract art, and present the mature styles of the participating artists. Raiba A. M. Davierwalla Abanindranath Tagore Ambadas Arpana Caur Avinash Chandra Benode Behari Mukherjee Bikash Bhattacharjee Biren De Chittaprosad D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dhanraj Bhagat Early Bengal (Anonymous) F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Gaganendranath Tagore Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Gieve Patel Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose Haku Shah Hemanta Misra Hemendranath Majumdar Himmat Shah Indra Dugar J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Panicker K. G. Subramanyan K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni K. S. Radhakrishnan Kalighat Pat (Anonymous) Laxman Pai M. A. R. Chughtai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Manu Parekh Meera Mukherjee N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj P. T. Reddy P. V. Janakiram Paritosh Sen Piloo Pochkhanawalla Prosanto Roy R. Vijaivargiya Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Raghav Kaneria Raja Ravi Varma Ramkinkar Baij S. Dhanapal S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Sohan Qadri Somnath Hore Sunayani Devi Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Thota Vaikuntam V. Nageshkar

Learn More

The colours we see around us are a complex network of visual signifiers. Like spoken dialects, each colour contains multiple—at times conflicting—meanings that are moulded by a universal base and many regional variances. A. A. Almelkar A. H. Müller A. P. Santhanaraj Abalall Rahiman Abanindranath Tagore Ahmed Amir Altaf Ambadas Amit Ambalal Amitava Anonymous Anupam Sud Avinash Chandra Benode Behari Mukherjee Bijan Choudhary Biren De Bireswar Sen Bishamber Khanna Bishnupada Roy Chowdhury Chittaprosad D. C. Joglekar D. P. Roy Chowdhury Dattatraya Apte Devayani Krishna Devraj Dakoji Dharamanarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Iranna G. R. Santosh G. S. Haldankar Ganesh Haloi Gobardhan Ash Gogi Saroj Pal Hemanta Misra Himmat Shah Indra Dugar Indu Rakshit J. P. Gonsalves J. Sultan Ali Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Paniker K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni Kanwal Krishna Kavita Nayar Krishna Reddy Lalit Mohan Sen Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. K. Parandekar M. R. Acharekar M. S. Joshi Madhvi Parekh Manu Parekh Nand Katyal Nandalal Bose Natvar Bhavsar Navjot Nicholas Roerich Nikhil Biswas Om Prakash P. Khemraj Paramjit Singh Paresh Maity Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Prabhakar Barwe Prokash Karmakar Rabin Mondal Radha Charan Bagchi Ramendranath Chakravorty Ramgopal Vijaivargiya Ramkinkar Baij Ranen Ayan Dutta S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre S. L. Haldankar Sanat Chatterjee Sanat Kar Sankho Chaudhuri Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Shobha Broota Somnath Hore Sudhir Khastgir Sunayani Devi Sunil Das V. B. Pathare Vasundhara Tewari Broota Vivan Sundaram Walter Langhammer

Learn More

Learn More

Few artists claim as rich and intriguing a legacy as M. V. Dhurandhar in the landscape of late 19th and early 20th century Indian art. His practice leaves us with challenging questions about encounters and exchanges with India's colonial past and the influence of Europeans in shaping the evolution of painting. This exhibition revisits Dhurandhar's vast oeuvre through DAG's extensive collection of his paintings, archival material and ephemera, in an attempt to understand the socio-cultural context of his emergence, and to re-examine his influence on institutional and commercial art in the country.

Learn More

Twenty years after India’s independence, Films Division, the government’s documentary and propaganda filmmaking body, was seeking to re-invent itself. It had the mandate of recording the nation’s history on film. It was also a project of moulding the citizen through films that were screened in cinema theatres, before the entertainment feature. The films covered varied subjects from development, self-reliance, social issues, to art and culture, making them an invaluable archive of the Indian state’s record of the nation’s history as a modern, progressive nation. The films remained largely unpopular, like homework, among the unwilling audience of people who waited for the entertainment film to follow the documentary. Learn More