Search results for: 'dhanraj bhagat the spirit of work'

Group 1890 remains unique in the journey of modern Indian art for various reasons, the most important being J. Swaminathan as the force behind the short-lived collective that held only one exhibition in its lifetime, in 1963. In 2016, DAG organized a ‘second’ exhibition of the group, featuring works by all its founder members. Learn More

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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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European artists and architects were deeply influenced by the rich cultural heritage and artistic traditions of India, which, in turn, influenced their architectural designs. Artistic representations served as a bridge between cultures, leading to the incorporation of Indian motifs, styles, and decorative elements in colonial architecture. Learn More

A well-known poet and essayist, Prayag Shukla is also one the foremost writers on art in Hindi. He has authored monographs on artists like J. Swaminathan, M. F. Husain and Ambadas, expanding upon these artists’ relationships with local institutions and contexts of art-making in India since the 1960s.

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Artists may be anonymous but their times are not. Art historian and curator Dr. Tapati Guha-Thakurta takes us through the Early Bengal oil paintings from the 19th and early 20th century on display at DAG, New Delhi.

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What wonder it must have been for the people in England to ‘see’ India for the first time, the exotica that they had only heard of until then! The artists who made this possible through their paintings and aquatints were the uncle-nephew duo of Thomas Daniell and William Daniell, whose magnum opus, Oriental Scenery, was the subject of this landmark exhibition at Drishyakala, a joint collaboration between DAG and the Archaeological Survey of India.

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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.

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Diana Campbell is the Artistic Director of the Samdani Art Foundation, now in its 10th year, and chief curator of the prestigious Dhaka Art Summit, whose sixth edition starts on February 3, 2023. She spoke with the DAG Journal’s editorial team to discuss her own curatorial process and how she makes room for experimentation, and unpacks the intriguing thematic of this new edition: ‘flood’, or bonna.

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DAG Museum’s annual festival ‘The City as a Museum’ attempts to explore the various archives, communities and artistic traditions that cohere around the life of a city. Put together, they tell different stories about the city across time and space, from the point of view of neighbourhoods, collections and institutions, but not just limited to those either.

In order to learn more about this unique programme that seeks to explore heritage outside the walls of a traditional gallery or museum, read on!

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The Devi or the female power in Hindu mythology appears in various avatars in our everyday lives—as idols during the puja, on covers of magazines, product labels, calendars and posters. The modern history of visualising the Devi goes back to naturalistic depictions in oil paintings by the Early Bengal artists, which were surpassed in popularity and fame by Raja Ravi Varma and his studio. His representation, however, was regarded as too human-like by artists of the Bengal School in the early twentieth century, who created idealised forms based on a synthesis of classical visual traditions. In the twentieth century, we find artists responding to distinctive traits of the goddess to portray specific aspects of her power, or to convey the artist's own relationship with divinity. Few artists who have turned to Hindu myths have been able to escape the temptation to interpret the female power in their own way, and the diversity in style, medium, and mood is a testament to that.

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