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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, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta reflects on M.V Dhurandhar’s mythological painting of Usha and Anirudhdha’s union, drawing attention to the grace and fluidity that suffuse his expert rendition of form along with his mastery over capturing the intricate details of women’s dresses. Learn More

‘Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, Edition 2’ opened on 11 February at DAG’s Janpath Gallery in New Delhi featuring fifty artworks which shaped the trajectory of pre-modern and modern art in the country. As part of the exhibition, Manu Parekh speaks about his 1971 painting ‘Shiva’, created at a pivotal juncture of his artistic career when he was trying to forge a visual language different from the Bengal School. Learn More

What is the role of collectors and collections or archives in the world of art today? Does it simply allude to practices of producing a consumable past today or does it also aspire to question the ways in which history has been shaped by powerful interventions in the form of artworks, performances and installations?  In this series of conversations, we wanted to explore the idea of collecting recent or contemporary art—and how it inevitably takes us back to the moderns who influenced such practices heavily. 

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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.

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In February, Paris' Centre Pompidou--a premier centre for modern art since its construction in 1977--mounted an extensive solo show looking back at S. H. Raza’s career in painting. It represents a historic moment for Indian modern art’s international story as it unfolded over the twentieth century, and also marked Raza's own symbolic return to the place where he stayed for most of his working life. The fertile post-independent period saw cross-cultural connections being forged by Indian artists in Europe and America on their own terms and this show is a testament to Raza’s evolving encounters with land and mythology. The curators, Catherine David and Diane Toubert, spoke to DAG highlighting some of the takeaways from this major retrospective.

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DAG in collaboration with ASI (Archaeological Survey of India) presents Drishyakala. An incredible array of over 400 artworks spread over 25,000 square ft. by India’s leading artists from the DAG collection—made all the more unique for its presentation within a UNESCO World Heritage Site—the Red Fort.

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India’s foremost printmaker, Anupam Sud is perhaps also the country’s most well-known. What has tethered her to the democratic medium of printmaking—against all odds, needless to say—is a reason worth discovering in this short video in which the artist muses over her motivations and practice. Learn More

This exhbition explored the evolution of the genre of portrait painting in India. Curated by Pramod Kumar KG, it was specially created for Drishyakala, a joint collaboration between DAG and the Archaeological Survey of India, at Red Fort, Delhi. Visitors came face to face with dazzling canvases, expressive watercolours and early prints of people known and unknown in this extraordinary exhibition.

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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

The role of popular prints in providing a visual lexicon to India’s freedom struggle—carrying images of its vital players and events to the farthest corners of the country—received a tremendous boost with this Paula Sengupta-curated exhibition at Drishyakala, Red Fort, Delhi, in 2019, a joint collaboration between DAG and the Archaeological Survey of India. Learn More

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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At the turn of the twentieth century, Abanindranath Tagore asked himself if the emerging artists of modern India should continue to paint in the manner of their European colonizers; or was there a new path waiting to be forged? His answers led him to envision a pan-Asian cultural identity, spanning traditions from Persia to Japan, and culminating in a ‘new “Indian” art.’ Regarded as the founder of the Bengal School, Abanindranath left an unparalleled legacy both in terms of his own diverse body of work, and through his pupils, like Nandalal Bose, who shaped the contours of art across the subcontinent in the twentieth century.

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