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The idea of primitivism centres on the wish to identify with, or respond to, elements of a society that are deemed ‘primitive’. In artistic terms, it is about rejecting realism, simplifying technique and reducing the formal means of expression to a ‘primitive’ state. The term itself is borrowed from discussions of Western art, where high-profile examples include the images of Tahiti and its people made in the 1890s by Paul Gauguin, and responses to African sculpture by Pablo Picasso in 1906-09. The second thread of primitivism—the reduction of formal means—is best exemplified by the ‘cut-outs’ made by Henri Matisse in the 1940s.

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

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.

This is the first-ever retrospective of the Indian modern artist Avinash Chandra who lived most of his life in the West, in London and New York. The artist, who had trained in New Delhi, left soon after for London, and most of his practice was limited to London and New York, the two cities he called his home till his unfortunately early death in 1991. In the roughly three-and-a-half decades of his career, Avinash’s work changed amazingly, reflecting his environment and milieu as he grew and adapted to cities vastly different from their Indian counterparts, with their own sub-cultures. That this happily coincided with a discovery of India, however superfluously, as a land of spirituality and sexuality, seemed to serve him well as his muse.