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Join Tapati Guha-Thakurta for a museum visit and presentation as we explore the beginnings of the colonial traditions of art and design in India through the twin histories of the Indian Museum and the Government College of Art and Craft.

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Born in Onkkoor, Kerala, Surendran Nair graduated in painting from College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, in 1982, and studied printmaking from M. S. University, Baroda, in 1986. Nair began his art practice with strongly realist pen and ink drawings, etchings and lithographs, and commemorated people from his immediate surroundings or literary heroes in his portraiture. Learn More

Madhvi Parekh was born and raised in Sanjaya, a village in Gujarat. Though she is self-taught and took up painting only in 1964, inspired by her artist-husband Manu Parekh, art remained a part of her consciousness through childhood memories, her family’s rituals such as the traditional floor designs of rangoli, popular folk stories, and simple village life. While expecting their first child, Parekh’s husband gifted her a book on drawing exercises by Paul Klee, and soon she was taking the first steps towards creating her own art vocabulary. Learn More

In the galaxy of modern masters, one name that is synonymous with twentieth century Indian art, is M. F. Husain’s. Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, on 17 September 1911, Husain came to Bombay in 1937 to become a painter, where he slept on footpaths and painted under streetlights. A self-taught artist, he began his career painting cinema posters and hoardings, and, in 1941, started making toys and furniture designs. Learn More

Also known as Company School, this genre is the Indo-European style of painting made in India by Indian artists, most of whom worked under the patronage of the East India Company. Focusing on a spectacular painting, William Dalrymple takes us through a journey of this neglected yet outstanding genre of art from nineteenth century India.

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Henry Singleton’s The Last Effort and Fall of Tippoo Sultaun belongs to a genre known as history painting: the depiction of important historical events, usually on a large scale, as if they were playing out in front of one’s eyes. Author and parliamentarian Shashi Tharoor and art historian Giles Tillotson explain the lively imagination deployed in Singleton’s painting that depicts the British assault on Seringapatam and the killing of its ruler, Tipu Sultan—himself the source of so many stories that it was difficult to unravel the truth from the many falsities spun by the biased colonial administration and historians of the time.

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This collection of essays, co-edited by eminent scholars of art history, Tapati Guha-Thakurta and Vazira Zamindar, navigate the fraught religio-political contexts of South Asia to bring into relief the fragility and amorphous nature of a contested term like the ‘secular’.

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Drawing from the Greek word skhedios, meaning ‘to extemporize’, the sketch presents an interiorized, psychological landscape against classical painting’s heroic, externalized construction of the painted tableau. For many artists, sketching and drawing suggest initial explorations for capturing moods, relations and subjectivities that can be expanded through later applications of paint and texture.

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Tipu Sultan’s historical legacy has led to several conversations, among which its visual inheritance has provided room for debate on its particularly skewed European view. Catch our guest speaker William Dalrymple’s reflections on this subject.

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Alita Chandra, daughter of the artist Avinash Chandra reflects on the transcultural influences on his painting and his preoccupation with female subjects.

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'Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, Edition 2' opened on 11 February, featuring fifty artworks which shaped the trajectory of pre-modern and modern art in the country. As part of the exhibition, R. Siva Kumar elaborates on Abanindranath Tagore’s wash technique and reflects on ‘The Dreamer’, a painting which conveys Tagore’s belief in the power of an artist to effect social changes. Learn More

What does it take to liberate a woman’s figure from patriarchal gaze? Courage and conviction, perhaps, as artist Vasundhara Tewari Broota shares in this short interview. Speaking from the experience of painting with courage, the artist also provides a peek into her thought process.

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