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The midwestern city of Chicago hosts one of America’s most important art fairs—Expo Chicago—in which DAG participated in an attempt to introduce Indian moderns to the diaspora there as well as to art-lovers in general. To introduce art to this midwestern population, DAG picked on well-established names from the Indian art marquee. This included the National Treasure artist Jamini Roy whose works outside India are a rarity since they cannot be exported. Others included the Progressives F. N. Souza and M. F. Husain, New York-based printmakers Krishna Reddy and Zarina Hashmi (both now deceased) and artist Natvar Bhavsar, abstractionists Sohan Qadri and G. R. Santosh, a rare sculpture by Prodosh Das Gupta, and a body of other modernists representing the diverse range of works created by Indian artists in the twentieth century. A suite of small format watercolour landscapes by Bireswar Sen was a highlight of the booth. Avinash Chandra Bireswar Sen Chittaprosad F N Souza F N Souza G R Santosh Ganesh Pyne Jamini Roy K.S Kulkarni Krishna Reddy Laxman Pai M F Husain Madhvi Parekh Natvar Bhavsar Paritosh Sen Prodosh Das Gupta Rabin Mondal Sohan Qadri Zarina Hashmi

New York’s popular Armory Show required DAG to put forth its most emphatically modernist artists. These included several who had been fellows of the John D. Rockefeller III Fund and would thus have a resonance among art connoisseurs in America for their language and context. Instead of concentrating on the Progressives, therefore, DAG decided to curate a selection that included works by Avinash Chandra and Natvar Bhavsar with extensive careers in New York, and an important body of works by artists such as S. H. Raza, Ram Kumar, Krishen Khanna, Paritosh Sen, and Satish Gujral, among others. Avinash Chandra Jyoti Bhatt K G Subrmanyan Krishen Khanna Natvar Bhavsar Paritosh Sen Ram Kumar Tyeb Mehta Rekha Rodwittiya S. H. Raza Satish Gujral

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

The 1970s was a decade like no other for a young India gaining in confidence nationally as well as on the global firmament. In 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led the country to a decisive victory against Pakistan, leading to the creation of Bangladesh. The Green Revolution had borne fruit, and Operation Flood now launched a milk revolution in the country, and the culmination of the privy purse turned it into a socialist republic with a strong handle on its economic button. Internationally, much was made of India’s resilience, and the country’s soft power began to win it recognition for its films, fashion, food and culture. India had arrived. ALTAF AMBADAS AMITAVA AVINASH CHANDRA BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE BIREN DE BIRESWAR SEN ERIC BOWEN F. N. SOUZA G. R. SANTOSH GANESH HALOI GOGI SAROJ PAL INDRA DUGAR J. SULTAN ALI J. SWAMINATHAN K C S PANIKER K. K. HEBBAR K. LAXMA GOUD KRISHNA REDDY LAXMAN PAI M. F. HUSAIN MADHVI PAREKH NAVJOT ALTAF P. T. REDDY PARITOSH SEN PRABHAKAR BARWE PRODOSH DASGUPTA PROKASH KARMAKAR RABIN MONDAL RAJENDRA DHAWAN RAM KUMAR S G VASUDEV SATISH GUJRAL SHANTI DAVE SHYAMAL DUTTA RAY SOHAN QADRI TYEB MEHTA V. VISWANADHAN ZARINA HASHMI

A print is an original work of art created and printed by hand by an artist or a professional printing assistant from a ‘matrix’—a plate, block of stone, wood or stencil. The image is created on the matrix and the artist takes a limited number of impressions or prints off it. These impressions are numbered and signed by the artist and belong to a limited edition, and this makes the print an original work of art and not a reproduction. Printmaking consists of a wide range of processes: relief printmaking which consists of techniques like engraving, woodcut and linocut; planographic processes such as lithography and oleography, intaglio processes such as drypoint, etching, aquatint, mezzotint, photo processes and collography; and serigraphy, where the image is printed through a silk screen on to the paper. A P Bagchi A Ramachandran Abanindranath Tagore Ajit Dubey Akhilesh verma Akkitham Naryanan Amitabh Banerjee Amitava Anonymous Print Anupam Sud Arun Bose B P Banerjee Basudev Roy Bengal Lithograph Bengal Oleographs Bengal Woodcut Benod Behari Mukherjee Bhupen Khakhar Bijan Choudhury Chittaprosad Daniell William Devraj Dakoji Devyani Krishna Francis N Souza F. B Solvyns Ganesh Haloi Gulam Sheikh Haren Das Himmat Shah Indu Rakshit Indumati Roop Krishna Jagdish Dey Jagmohan Chopra Jai Zahrotia Jamini Roy Jyoti Bhatt K Laxma Goud K V Haridasan Krishna Ahuja Krishna Reddy Lalu Prasad Shaw M F Husain M. V Dhurandhar Madhvi Parekh Maniklal Banerjee Manu Parekh Moti Zahrotia Mrinalini Mukherjee Mukul Dey Nagji Patel Nalini Malani Nandalal Bose Navjot Paneer Selvam Partha Pratim Deb Portrait Punjab Litho Qamrool Hassan R B Bhaskaran Rabin Mondal Radha Charan Bagchi Ram Kumar Ramendranath Chakravorthy Ramkinkar Baij Rani Dey Ravi Varma Press Ravi Varma Print Rini Dhumal Sakti Burman Sanat Kar Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Shyamal Dutta Ray Somnath Hore Sudhir Khastgir Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen Suren Gangooly Sushanta Guha Sushil Sen Suvaprasanna Tapan Bhowmik Tarak Basu Thoman Daniell V Vishwanadhan Various Litho and Olio Vijay Bagodi Vinayak Masoji Vivan Sundaram Walter D’Souza Yogesh Rawal Zainul Abedin

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.

Artist and institution-builder Shuvaprasanna’s residence is located in a leafy corner of Kolkata’s suburban township, Bidhannagar or ‘Salt lake City’, which was envisaged by the former Chief Minister of West Bengal, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy in the late 1950s. Having grown up elsewhere—in College Street, in fact—the artist only moved here in 2002-03 with his family, which included his wife and fellow-artist, Shipra Bhattacharya. In this photo-essay we will learn about Shuvaprasanna’s personal collection and the relationship between his collecting practices and his art-making.

DAG’s debut at Art Basel Hong Kong aimed to provide an overview of the twentieth century Indian art, tracking key catalytic movements and introducing important masters and artists to an art audience unfamiliar with their work. This included the Progressives, of course, but also other modernists whose contribution to Indian art has been significant. The exhibition display at its large booth was aimed at maximising the number of paintings that could be displayed, including sculptures, and was accompanied by a catalogue. A. A. Raiba Akbar Padamsee Anjolie Ela Menon Avinash Chandra B. Prabha Bikash Bhattacharjee Biren De D. P. Roy Chowdhury F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Pyne Gogi Saroj Pal H. A. Gade Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali Jogen Chowdhury K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud M. F. Husain P. T. Reddy Prodosh Das Gupta Prosanto Roy Ram Kumar S. Dhanapal S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Sankho Chaudhuri Sohan Qadri Sunil Das

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.

The exhibition brings together important and unusual works of art that span a wide range of genres, forms, periods and styles. They are grouped by genre, of abstract art, figurative art, landscape art, portraiture and still-life. Each thematic arrangement features a select collection of artworks from the artist’s mature period, several of which are of substantial art historical significance. Ambadas S. K. Bakre Avinash Chandra V. S. Gaitonde Ganesh Haloi Hemanta Misra Jeram Patel Sohan Qadri S. H. Raza Krishna Reddy G. R. Santosh Laxman Shreshtha Figurative J. Sultan Ali A. A. Almelkar Amitava Radha Charan Bagchi Bikash Bhattacharjee Nikhil Biswas Sakti Burman Chittaprosad Bijan Choudhary Prodosh Das Gupta Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Biren De S. Dhanpal M. V. Dhurandhar Shyamal Dutta Ray Early Bengal (Anonymous) K. Laxma Goud Satish Gujral M. F. Husain Kalighat Pat (Anonymous) Prokash Karmakar George Keyt Krishen Khanna P. Khemraj K. S. Kulkarni Ram Kumar Kshitindranath Majumdar Tyeb Mehta Anjolie Ela Menon Rabin Mondal M. Reddappa Naidu Badri Narayan Navjot Laxman Pai Gogi Saroj Pal Gieve Patel Ganesh Pyne Ravi Varma School (Anonymous) P. T. Reddy Jamini Roy Paritosh Sen Sunil Madhav Sen B. Vithal Landscape Akbar Padamsee Kisory Roy F. N. Souza J. Swaminathan Portraits Anonymous Jyoti Bhatt Sankho Chaudhuri Jogen Chowdhury Sunil Das Olinto Ghilardi Surendran Nair M. F. Pithawalla A. A. Raiba Himmat Shah Rabindranath Tagore Still-life K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar B. Prabha Jehangir Sabavala S. G. Thakur singh

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