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Colonization is perhaps best understood as a process that unfolded over time than as a single historical event. In India and South Asia it began with the East India Company acquiring rights over land in different parts of the country, with the occasional political victories won on the battlefields. Since the Battle of Plassey (1757), their power over legislative and judicial matters grew steadily, backed by a strong military presence. Following the First War of Independence in 1857, the British Crown brought most parts of the Indian subcontinent under its direct rule, continuing to hold power until 1947.

One of the most distinguished families in Bengal, the Tagores exercised unparalleled influence over the cultural landscape of the region. The Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), and two of his nephews, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) and Abanindranath Tagore (1871 - 1951) were recognised as India’s National Art Treasure artists. Sunayani Devi (1875 -1962), their sister, is regarded as one of modern India’s first women painters known by name. Her lyrical paintings and embroideries often looked inward to an imagined world of fables and myths. At the turn of the twentieth century, we see Abanindranath emerging as the founder of the Bengal School as he envisioned a new Indian art that was free of colonial influence, rooted in pan-Asianism. Gaganendranath, on the other hand, was a prolific satirist and cartoonist, who imagined new forms and perspectives inspired by Cubism. Together they formed the influential Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1907, while Rabindranath’s school and university at Santiniketan would continue to shape modern art in Bengal for generations to come.

The Madras Art Movement that emerged in the early 1960s was a late phenomenon of modernity in south India within the national context. It developed as a regional phenomenon that began to take shape from the mid-1950s onwards as a search for authenticity in modernism derived largely from the region’s cultural heritage. D. P. ROY CHOWDHURY A P SANTHANARAJ ACHUTHAN KUDALLUR AKKITHAM NARAYANAN ALPHONSO DOSS C DOUGLAS C J ANTHONY DOSS J. SULTAN ALI K C S PANIKER K M ADIMOOLAM K RAMANUJAM K SREENIVASULU K V HARIDASAN L MUNUSWAMY M SENATHIPATI M SURYAMOORTHY P GOPINATH P PERUMAL P S NANDHAN PANEER SELVAM R B BHASKARAN REDDEPPA NAIDU Rm. PALANIAPPAN S G VASUDEV S. DHANAPAL S. NANDAGOPAL V. VISWANADHAN VIDYASHANKAR STHAPATI

A guided walk of the first free circulating public library of India—Uttarpara Public Library—with researcher Sarbajit Mitra, traversing the history of regional literary cultures, and sifting through their vast archive to delve into the vibrant world of illustrated periodicals in colonial Bengal, followed by a poetry reading by Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee. 

Pebet is a ‘phunga wari’, a type of traditional fireside story told to Manipuri children by their grandparents. Directed by the renowned theatre practitioner Heisnam Kanhailal and performed first in 1975, it subverts the familiar icon of the bird and the cat to comment on political and cultural indoctrination.

A guided walk of the first free circulating public library of India—Uttarpara Public Library—with researcher Sarbajit Mitra, traversing the history of regional literary cultures, and sifting through their vast archive to delve into the vibrant world of illustrated periodicals in colonial Bengal, followed by a poetry reading by Sujoy Prasad Chatterjee. 

An experiential learning and apprenticeship programme for high school students in collaboration with arts education organisations, offering them a first-hand experience of working in a museum, learning about the art and history, and translating their learnings to develop museum experiences for their peers.

On the thirtieth year of DAG’s presence in the Indian art landscape, we are especially delighted to share with our readers the first issue of our Journal. DAG has upheld a high quality of research through exhibitions and publications that have shaped how people understand Indian modern art. Through this journal, we want to keep those discussions going and point towards newer ways to approach the period of modernism—joining the dots that lead those significant artistic breakthroughs into the contemporary. We also want to create a space where readers can gain privileged access into the people and organizations who works around the clock to keep the art world ticking.  

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.

The Delhi Durbars were a series of coronation events held by the British in India which formally declared the British monarch as the Emperor or Empress of India. They took place thrice—first, in 1887, acknowledging Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, followed by one in 1903, for King Edward VII, and finally in 1911 for King George V, which saw the monarch’s attendance in person.

Shanti Dave’s abstracts resemble—at first—the familiar and the unknown. There are writings, figures, deities, forms and shapes that resonate with what we seem to know. If the language is indecipherable, perhaps it belongs to some ancient texts lost to history. Is this his ode to a civilisation that existed in the past, or a prophesy of one to come? Is it a world hidden underwater? Or perhaps one alien to us because it comes from some other planet? Are these tombstones, or markers, of some mythological or historical realm?