Search results for: 'Edwin lord we'

India’s Rockefeller Artists showcases iconic works of the Indian painters and sculptors who travelled to the US on philanthropic grants from the JDR 3rd Fund (1963–1979) and later through the Asian Cultural Council. These artists were exposed to American art and shared their own learnings and experiences through these enriching cultural exchanges. The show examines how and why these artists were selected; their relationships with each other and the American art milieu; the impact of the experience on their work; and the creation of a community of Rockefeller artists.

‘Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, Edition 02’, the second iteration of DAG’s annual exhibition that redefines the concept of modernism in the Indian context, will be on view in New Delhi this month. Timed to coincide with the launch of its new gallery in the capital, ‘Iconic Masterpieces’ brings together the finest instances of art created in the country by Western and Asian travelling artists and Indian masters spread a little over two centuries. Selected for their rarity, historicity, and excellence, each work of art in this exhibition marks the zenith in terms of the quality of art created in different periods and styles in the subcontinent.

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.

The exhibition brings together important works of art spanning a wide range of genres, forms, periods and styles. They are grouped by genre and each thematic arrangement features a select collection of artworks that are milestones in Indian modernism, as well as in the development of the artistic language of several of the participating artists. A. A. Raiba Abalall Rahiman Akbar Padamsee Ambadas Amitava Avinash Chandra B. C. Sanyal B. N. Arya Baburao Painter Benode Behari Mukherjee Bikash Bhattacharjee Bipin Behari Goswami Biren De Chittaprosad Devyani Krishna Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Early Bengal (Anonymous) F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Gieve Patel Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose H. A. Gade Hemanta Misra Himmat Shah Indra Dugar Indu Rakshit J. P. Gangooly J. Sultan Ali Jamini Roy Jeram Patel K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud Kshitindranath Majumdar Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. V. Dhurandhar Manu Parekh Mohan Samant N. R. Sardesai Nandalal Bose Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj P. S. Chander Sheker P. T. Reddy P. V. Janakiram Paritosh Sen Pestonji E. Bomanji Prabhakar Barwe Prodosh Das Gupta Prokash Karmakar Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Radha Charan Bagchi Ram Kumar Ravi Varma School (Anonymous) S. Dhanapal S. G. Thakur Singh S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Satish Gujral Shanti Dave Shiavax Chavda Shyamal Dutta Ray Sohan Qadri Sunil Das Surendran Nair Tyeb Mehta V. Nageshkar Vivan Sundaram

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.

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.

The exhibition presents views of the ancient city of Benares (now Varanasi) as depicted by foreign artists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

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.