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A great number of short-lived but nonetheless significant art movements arose in India over the twentieth century as Indian artists struggled with evolving or arriving at their identity as modern artists and an appropriate visual language of Indian modernism. One of the most significant amongst these is the artist collective, Group 1890, formed in 1962 with twelve young artists, led by the artist and art critic J. Swaminathan. The group consisted of J. Swaminathan, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, Ambadas, Jyoti Bhatt, Raghav Kaneria, M. Reddeppa Naidu, Rajesh Mehra, Eric Bowen, S. G. Nikam and Balkrishna Patel. Ambadas Balkrishna Patel Eric Bowen Gulammohammed Sheikh Himmat Shah J. swaminathan Jeram Patel Jyoti Bhatt Raghav Kaneria Rajesh Mehra Reddappa Naidu S. G. Nikam

A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography, a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer A. A. Raiba Abalall Rahiman Abanindranath Tagore Akbar Padamsee Alagiri Naidu Alphonso Doss Ambika Dhurandhar Anjolie Ela Menon Anonymous (Bengal Lithographs) Anonymous (Ladies and Gentlemen) Anonymous (Painted Photographs) Anonymous (Parsi Eminences) 90 Anonymous (Raja Ravi Varma School) Anonymous (Royal Personages) Anonymous (Spiritual) Anonymous (Studio Photographs) Ardeshir Duishajee Tavaria Asit Kumar Haldar B. Paul Baburao Sadwelkar Badri Narayan Benjamin Hudson Bhunath Mukherjee Bhupen Khakhar Bikash Bhattacharjee Bipin Behari Goswami Biswanath Mukerji C. N. Kistnasawmy Naidu Cecil Burns Chintamoni Kar Chittaprosad D. L. N. Reddy D. P. Roy Chowdhury Devyani Krishna F. N. Souza Fatima Ahmed Frank Brooks G. Kamble G. N. Jadhav G. R. Santosh Gaganendranath Tagore George Keyt Gobardhan Ash Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Deuskar Gopal Ghose Gopal Sanyal H. Hormusji Deboo Himmat Shah Hiranmoy Roychaudhuri J. A. Lalkaka J. Barton J. D. Dalvi J. D. Gondhalekar J. P. Gonsalves J. P. Gangooly J. Sultan Ali Jacob Epstein Jai Zharotia Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. C. Pyne K. K. Hebbar K. Lall K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni Kanwal Krishna Keshavrao Sadashiv Kisory Roy Koulji Ardeshir Tachakra Krishen Khanna L. M. Sen L. Munuswamy L. N. Taskar L. P. Shaw Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. K. Parandekar M. R. Acharekar M. V. Dhurandhar Mukul Dey Muni Singh N. R. Sardesai Nemai Ghosh Nirode Majumdar Olinto Ghilardi P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Partha Pratim Deb Pestonji E. Bomanji Pradip Maitra Prahlad Karmakar Prokash Karmakar R. D. Panvalkar R. S. Bisht Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Raja Ravi Varma Rama Lal Ramendranath Chakravorty S. A. Meerza S. Dhanapal S. G. Thakar Singh S. L. Haldankar Sankho Choudhuri Satish Sinha Savi Savarkar Shanti Dave Sudhir Khastgir Suhas Roy Sunil Das Sunil Kumar Paul Sunil Madhav Sen Sunqua Surendran Nair Sushil Chandra Sen Tarak Garai V. A. Mali V. B. Pathare V. M. Oke V. Nageshkar Ved Nayar Vivan Sundaram Wasim Kapoor

In a career spanning four decades, Amitava’s location as an artist has determined the authority that he brings to his practice. As an artist studying and working in the 1960s, Amitava Das experienced a decade of fragmented locii. The ’60s, the period of his education at the College of Art, was the decade of wars, fiscal difficulty and an uncertain polity in the wake of the death of Jawaharlal Nehru. Further, as a second generation pravasi (non-residing Indian) Bengali, the roiling political violence of West Bengal’s Naxal movement came to him through the filter of poetry, film and art—much as he would have received the existential writing of Camus, Genet and Rilke. Through the 1960s and ’70s, small groups of artists and filmmakers in different pockets in India had a heightened response: the state of the nation found an uncanny echo in the language of modernism, of the artist’s isolation and purity even within a state of uncertainty.

Rabin Mondal is like a striding colossus of our times, scorching up the firmament with images that reflect societal malaise and his own inner turmoil. His determination to paint in a market-unfriendly manner is characteristic of his resolve. His canvases provide no safety net for the unwary viewer. Here is a confident artist aware of his self and his role with no fig leaf to offer those seeking beauty in art—not that his work is unbeautiful.

The exhibition features several works of academic realist portraiture from early 20th century—vivid oil portraits by masters of the form such as Pestonji Bomanji, M. F. Pithawalla, Baburao Painter and L. N. Taskar as well as charcoal sketches by M. V. Dhurandhar, an academic artist of renown of the same period. The selection features Western academic oil-influenced works on mythological themes by the school referred to as Early Bengal and two works painted in a Raja Ravi Varma-derived style—an anonymous work by the Ravi Varma ‘School’ and Aroomoogam Pillay. A. A. Almelkar Abalall Rahiman Abani Sen Akbar Padamsee Ambadas Anonymous (EarlyBengal) Anonymous (Portraiture ) Anupam Sud Aroomoogam Pillay Avinash Chandra Baburao Painter Badri Narayan Bijan Choudhary Bikash Bhattacharjee Biren De Chintamoni Kar Chittaprosad D. P. Roy Chowdhury Devyani Krishna Dharamnarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh G. Ravinder Reddy Ganesh Haloi Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose H. A. Gade Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jamini Roy Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury Jyoti Bhatt K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud K. S. Kulkarni K. V. Haridasan Kshitindranath Majumdar L. Munuswamy L. N. Taskar Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. V. Dhurandhar Madhvi Parekh Mukul Dey N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Nasreen Mohammedi Nicholas Roerich Nikhil Biswas P. Khemraj P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Pestonji E. Bomanji Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Ram Kumar Ramkinkar Baij Ravi Varma ‘School’ S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Sadequain Sailoz Mukherjea Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Sohan Qadri Sudhir Patwardhan Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Tarak Garai Ved Nayar Walter Langhammer

In the articulation of twentieth century art, where does one place Altaf Mohamedi? That question has probably troubled more curators than we realise. Altaf, who studied art in London before returning to Bombay (now Mumbai) was following in the footsteps of his elder sister and artist Nasreen Mohamedi, but that is where all similarities ended. Where Nasreen was an abstract, sparse artist who created a distinctive language using, for most part, rigid, inflexible lines that nevertheless sang on the paper over which they were made, Altaf’s work was intensely political and social.

Any new exhibition brings with it a frisson of excitement, but by any measure India Modern: Narratives From 20th Century Indian Art has been extra special. Most art lovers take Indian modernism for granted—but how many can truly claim to know what it really means. For too many years, the term has been loosely used, with very little awareness of what it includes, or omits. What the West understands and takes as a given is something that in India still remains a mystery, perhaps because art in India cannot strictly be viewed from the same trope as Western art. Perhaps this is true of most countries, but it is especially true of colonised nations where new engagements with art in the West were imposed without the benefit of growing their own local practices organically. This hybrid custom developed at various levels, which makes it exciting when viewed from some distance, but also imposes a challenge. Therefore the question: What does modernism in Indian art imply? Akbar Padamsee Ambadas Anjolie Ela Menon Avinash Chandra B. Prabha Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Gieve Patel H.A. Gade Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jehangir Sabavala Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury K. G. Subramanyan K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. S. Kulkarni Krishen Khanna Laxman Goud Laxman Pai M. F. Husain Manjit Bawa P. Khemraj P.T. Reddy Rabin Mondal Ram Kumar S. K. Bakre S.H. Raza Sakti Burman Sohan Qadri Somnath Hore Sunil Das

By the end of the century, however, the scene was changing, and infrastructure—following the economic reforms in 1991—began to improve, creating an interest in collecting art. Twentieth century Indian modern art has since been at the forefront of collecting and investing in Indian art, and DAG, which has the largest private collection of Indian art has a marked focus on this period of Indian art. Ambadas F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh George Keyt Jamini Roy K. K. Hebbar Kanwal Krishna Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. F. Pithawalla M. V. Dhurandhar Madhvi Parekh Nandalal Bose Nemai Ghosh Prokash Karmakar Rabin Mondal

The exhibition Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is a pioneering attempt to gather together works of sixteen prominent Indian artists under the single thematic rubric of the transient but least definable phases of contemporary art in the last century. The exhibition features the artworks, inspirations, and experiments, of artists that had a sustained relationship with tantra philosophy, its vivid, abstract, sacred symbols, or their personal spiritual illuminations. Biren De G. R. Santosh Gogi Saroj Pal J. Swaminathan Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Paniker Manu Parekh P. T. Reddy Prabhakar Barwe R. B. Bhaskaran S. H. Raza Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das V. Viswanadhan

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

How did the multiple trajectories of visual arts develop in the subcontinent? Where did they originate and how did their paths converge? Drishyakala offers a sweeping journey into the heterogenous histories of visual arts in India, from the first European travelling artists who drew landscapes to popular prints of the earliest woodcuts and lithographs evolving into the thriving advertising visuals of the 20th century. The exhibition is broadly divided into four categories, each exploring an unique area of development—the art of portraiture through photography and painting, oriental sceneries drawn by European travelling artists, popular prints from the late eighteenth century to post-independence and artworks of the nine National Treasure Artists. Together, these sections give brief glimpses into the dizzying variety of forms, styles and languages of South Asian art.