Search results for: 'eARLY bENGAL O'

Born in Maharashtra, B. Vithal took a diploma in sculptural art from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay. Taking to art with natural ease, he began drawing as early as five years of age, making Ganesha and other popular Hindu deities on his slate using chalk. The inspiration sustained through his entire life, and his work was mainly inspired by Hindu mythology, philosophy, and ancient Indian art.  Learn More

Abdul Aziz Raiba was born in Bombay on 20 July 1922 and studied miniature painting at Sir J. J. School of Art upon receiving a scholarship in 1942. He was an early associate of the Progressive Artists’ Group but later struck out on his own due to difference of opinion with other members. Learn More

One of India’s most important post-modernist painters, Sunil Das is known for his iconic drawings and paintings of horses and bulls. He rose to prominence early when he became the only Indian artist to win the Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award while still an undergraduate student, in 1959. Learn More

The most definitive painter of the portraits of the Sikh gurus, Sobha Singh was born on 29 November 1901 at Gurdaspur in the Punjab. Interested in the arts since childhood, he learnt to draw and sculpt on his own, the early death of his parents depriving him of formal training in art. He joined the British Indian army as a draughtsman and continued to learn from studying the works of English and European artists. Learn More

The search for abstraction in Indian art in the early years of Independence was born out of a desire among artists to attain an independent idiom of modernism. Rooted in the country’s philosophical and religious aesthetic, Prabhakar Kolte is among the leading practitioners engaged in this quest. A master of poetic and metaphysical abstractionism, Kolte received a diploma in painting from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1968. Initially, he freelanced as an illustrator, also working as a designer at Bombay Dyeing. 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

Born in Sindgi, Karnataka, Iranna G. Rukumpur, popularly known as G. R. Iranna, grew up on his father’s farm, worked in the fields, and studied in Sarang Math (a traditional village school or an ashram) where he discovered his early interest in drawing and painting. As a child, freshly laid-out roads were Iranna’s earliest canvases on which he drew images of Hanuman, the monkey-god, with chalk. Learn More

Francis Newton Souza, born on 12 April 1924, was expelled from school, then from his college—Sir J. J. School of art, Bombay—and later, as he insisted on saying, from his own country. Born in Goa, Souza’s catholic mother brought him up to be a priest, but he showed early signs of rebellion that would become an integral part of his life.

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Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury was born in Tajhat (in present day Bangladesh) in 15 June 15 1899. He learnt painting from Abanindranath Tagore, life drawing and portraiture from E. Boyess, and sculpting from Hiranmoy Roychoudhuri, with later training in Italy. Equally at ease with plaster and paint, he evolved his skills in bronze casting, and executed paintings that were an amalgam of the Chinese technique, the Japanese wash process, and his own scratching method, though his early paintings bore Tagore’s influence. Learn More

A visit to Studio Goppo in Santiniketan to learn the process of wet plate collodion, which was used to develop photographs in 19th and early 20th century India, with the artist and pedagogue Arpan Mukherjee.

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A participatory reading and activity session with researcher Shreya Mukherjee to explore analogue photography of the 19th and early 20th century and the revival or adaptation of the medium in contemporary art.

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The Dutch artist Marius Bauer was born on 25 January 1867 at The Hague, the Netherlands, to a stage painter who encouraged his son’s early interest in drawing.

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