Search results for: 'padam s e ea'

William Hodges (1744-97) was a pioneer in more ways than one. He was the first British landscape painter to visit India, and to portray scenery across the whole breadth of the Gangetic plain. As a writer, he gave the first detailed descriptions of numerous historic Indian buildings, and he theorised about the origins and evolution of Indian architectural design. His art illustrates his exploration into terrain which—in its breadth and scope—was at the time almost as unfamiliar to Indian as to Western eyes.

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist.

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.

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.

It is strange that Natvar Bhavsar, one of Indian art’s leading names, should never have been shown in India before. Having lived and worked in USA from 1962 onwards, it remains a mystery why his work has been seen in America but almost not at all in India. In spite of a few eminent collectors who have his work, Bhavsar has remained inexplicably ignored—an anomaly DAG is happy to correct with this seminal exhibition.

Most shows at DAG take time to develop because of the quality of research and scholarship they require to mount, but even by our own exacting standards, Continuum has taken longer than most. This, a retrospective in a sense of the six artists who formed the Progressive Artists’ Group, is seminal because it is for the first time since 1950 that the six artists forming the core group have been brought together in an exhibition of their works. The Progressives have become the rallying point for the modern movement in Indian art, and are considered among the most important artists of the last and current century. Of these, M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza and S. H. Raza dominate the market. Alongside, works by their contemporaries K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade and S. K. Bakre, who have largely been seen to have underperformed in comparison, will help re-draw such distinctions and place them on the same platform as their better-known peers. It will re-define their historical importance and gain them the recognition that is their due. Maqbool Fida Husain M.F.Husain Hari Ambadas Gade Syed Haider Raza Krishnaji Howlaji Ara Sadanandji k. Bakre Francis Newton Souza

The 1960s was a period of immense change around the world, and it had deep ramifications on India’s socio-political scenario. The country had left behind the jubilation of Independence and was feeling the pinch of a nation grappling with the issues of development that impacted society and environment. A war with China in 1962 and Pakistan in 1965 had far-reaching implications on the national psyche— the first of shame, the latter of pride. Crippling shortages and unemployment were impacting life, even as the country’s success with the Green Revolution was directed at self-sufficiency. Migration from the villages to urban centres was increasing. Disparities—economic, gender or class—provided fertile ground for the alienation of the other. The more anglicised among the youth found themselves being drawn into the vortex of a global hippie movement. A. A. RAIBA AMBADAS ANUPAM SUD AVINASH CHANDRA BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE BIMAL DASGUPTA DHANRAJ BHAGAT F. N. SOUZA G. R. SANTOSH HIMMAT SHAH J. SULTAN ALI J. SWAMINATHAN JAMINI ROY JERAM PATEL JOGEN CHOWDHURY JYOTI BHATT K. G. SUBRAMANYAN K. LAXMA GOUD KRISHEN KHANNA LAXMAN PAI M. F. HUSAIN MADHVI PAREKH P. T. REDDY PARITOSH SEN PRABHAKAR BARWE PRODOSH DASGUPTA PROKASH KARMAKAR RABIN MONDAL RAM KUMAR RAMESHWAR BROOTA S. H. RAZA S. K. BAKRE SAKTI BURMAN SATISH GUJRAL SHANTI DAVE SOHAN QADRI SOMNATH HORE SUNIL DAS ZARINA HASHMI

Who were the significant chroniclers of the Durbars?