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With the cultural calendar being packed till spring, join us as we travel through some of the most popular ongoing or upcoming art fairs and biennales. Take a close look at artists who bring modernist ideas to the contemporary art context. With some ubiquitous names from the twentieth century art world accompanied by a few of those that have been historically overlooked, discover how ideas around the Modern have evolved through these fairs and biennales, as we focus on notable artists from each art festival and delve into their practice.

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.

This exhibition looks at landscape painting in India over a period of two hundred years, from 1780 to 1980. We start with English artists who travelled in India from the late eighteenth century onwards, to rediscover what they were looking for, and how they saw what they found. The introduction of new materials, and the teaching of new methods in the art schools from the middle of the 19th century, encouraged some Indian artists to adopt similar academic style approaches. In the twentieth century, a reaction set in, as Indian artists sought new modes of expression. As if reclaiming their patrimony and the right to represent it, they invented a glorious array of new landscape styles.

This exhibition is significant as it marks one of the largest-ever shows of the Progressives and their associate members. It also celebrates the genesis of the Progressive Artists’ Group in Bombay in 1947 and its continued link with the city. Akbar Padamsee Bal Chhabda F. N. Souza H. A. Gade K.H. Ara Krishen Khanna M. F. Husain Mohan Samant Ram Kumar S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Tyeb Mehta V. S. Gaitonde

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.

'Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art' is an exhibition specially curated to commemorate the opening of DAG’s new galleries at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai. The pathbreaking exhibition of some of the finest nineteenth and twentieth century art related to India consists of fifty outstanding works, each of them exceptional for their historicity, rarity, and quality. Established in 1993, DAG has created an enviable reputation over the decades for its collection and exhibitions of twentieth century art. But with 'Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art', it draws attention to its growing strength in nineteenth century art, a new area that it has now committed itself to with a growing inventory of Western artists who travelled to India to paint, as well as Indian artists whose identities have remained unknown for lack of adequate documentation. The earliest work in this exhibition, dated 1805-10, is of one of the largest recorded Company Paintings, and concludes with a rare sculpture cast as recently as 2021 in Indonesia. Ramachandran Adi Davierwalla Ambadas Avinash Chandra Bikash Bhattacharjee Dhanraj Bhagat Early Bengal Oils Edwin Lord Weeks F. N. Souza Frank Brooks G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury K. C. S. Paniker K. G. Subramanyan K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Radhakrishnan Krishen Khanna Laxman Pai M. A. R. Chughtai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Madhvi Parekh Marius Bauer Natvar Bhavsar Nicholas Roerich Nikhil Biswas Paritosh Sen Prabhakar Barwe Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Rajendra Dhawan Ram Kumar Rameshwar Broota Ramgopal Vijaivargiya Ramkinkar Baij Ranbir Singh Kaleka Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Sohan Qadri Stefan Norblin Studio of Raja Ravi Varma Sunil Das Tyeb Mehta Company Paintings

Ramkinkar Baij is rightfully described as India’s first modernist sculptor for his pathbreaking use of cement and laterite as material, his choice of subjects and scale in public art projects, and his unconventional development of ideas.

The Poet is an abstract portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, imagined through negative spaces, concaves and convexes forming the eyes in a hollowed head, a masterclass in Baij’s cubist vocabulary. The portrait shared almost no physical attributes with the subject, instead focusing on distorting Tagore’s visage to give us insights into the state of his mind.

The birth of Amrita Sher-Gil to an Indian father and Hungarian mother bequeathed to the nation one of its most incandescent artists. Known for her luminous paintings, her work changed the face of modern Indian art and paved the course it was to take in the country. In a rare sculpture of tigers made, poignantly enough, in the last year of her life, Amrita Sher-Gil is revealed as someone exploring new directions before her tragic demise in 1941.

G. R. Santosh created a hugely accomplished career without formal training in art. His abstract paintings made in the early 1960s had Kashmir as his muse, and often used encaustic and beeswax—a process he learned from Shanti Dave. Architect and designer Pinakin Patel shares his views about In the Snows of Kashmir, Santosh’s masterful painting with textural relief in a monochrome palette.

Sohan Qadri was truly a global artist whose travels and practice spanned India, its Himalayan neighbours, Africa, Europe and Canada. His paintings can be summed up as yantras that serve as visual meditation tools. Invocation – 27 is a vibrant sea of yellow ochre with a band of blue in the middle. A captivating work, Geeti Sen explains, the painting serves to offer viewers a profound experience of transformation and self-discovery.

When the Met-Breuer opened in New York, its very first exhibition was a retrospective of Nasreen Mohamedi. Nasreen’s work is regarded as extremely important in the context of abstraction with delicate lines marking her compositions with a strength that is as remarkable as it is astounding, altering the way we see the world. The artist preferred drawing and sometimes photography, as a result her canvases are extremely rare to find. Sasha Altaf tells us more in this film about a canvas painted by her in Bahrain in 1969.