Born in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, Manu Parekh studied at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay. With influences as varied as Arshile Gorky, Roberto Matta, S. B. Palsikar and Rabindranath Tagore, Parekh has always sought to explore his inner landscape through art. Learn More
A watercolourist par excellence known for his paintings on silk, Maniklal Banerjee was born in Borisal in present-day Bangladesh. He studied at Government College of Art in Calcutta and while still a student, became the first Indian artist to receive the Government of India’s scholarship for the arts. Learn More
Possibly the most popular academic Indian artist after Raja Ravi Varma, M. V. Dhurandhar was born in Kolhapur. An early interest in drawing led his father to admit him to Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, where he received special encouragement from its principal, John Griffiths. Learn More
An important artist of the Madras Group that synthesised modernism by melding Indian traditions with Western modernist techniques under the direction of K. C. S. Paniker, M. Suriyamoorthy’s visual language employed emphatic regional and folk imagery. Learn More
A student of K. C. S. Paniker—the influential artist-teacher and founding father of the Madras Art Movement—M. Senathipathi is known for his richly textured works drawn from mythology and contextualised in contemporary social issues. Learn More
Born in Nashik, Maharashtra, M. S. Joshi studied at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in the 1930s. Joshi combined his training in academic realism with a sense of vitality, precision and aesthetics to reveal India’s rich cityscapes and landscapes in his watercolour and gouache works. There was immense depth in the rendering of his subjects, which included people, places, architectural elements, all done in a subdued yet textured palette. 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
A dynamic artist, intellectual, and educator, L. Munuswamy was a prominent practitioner within the Madras Art Movement who made abstraction a personal language in his artistic vocabulary. What made his works appealing was the international character, his individualistic vision and single-minded pursuit in his artistic endeavours. Learn More
Forced to paint signboards at the age of eleven when his father died, Krishna Shamrao Kulkarni battled numerous early struggles to achieve a pre-eminent place in modern Indian art. Born in a village in Belgaum in Karnataka in 1916, Kulkarni engaged with modernist techniques and mediums to create a highly individuated pictorial language. Learn More
Born in Nizampur in Andhra Pradesh on 21 August 1940, K. Laxma Goud obtained a diploma in painting and drawing from the Government College of Fine Arts and Architecture in Hyderabad in 1963. He followed it up with a post-diploma in mural painting and printmaking from Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda. Learn More
Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar, born on 15 June 1911 near Udupi in Karnataka, showed an inclination for the arts from his childhood—his father used to make Ganesha idols. Learn More
Born into an aristocratic family of gold merchants, Kartick Chandra Pyne took an interest in art at an early age. The older cousin of Ganesh Pyne, another remarkable Indian modernist, K. C. Pyne graduated in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, in 1955. Later, he taught at Calcutta’s Indian College of Arts and Draughtsmanship in the 1970s, and the Academy of Fine Arts in the ’80s. Learn More