Search results for: 'Pass for Dubai art show'

The exhibition presents views of the ancient city of Benares (now Varanasi) as depicted by foreign artists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

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Ramkinkar Baij is rightfully described as India’s first modernist sculptor for his pathbreaking use of cement and laterite as material, his choice of subjects and scale in public art projects, and his unconventional development of ideas.

The Poet is an abstract portrait of Rabindranath Tagore, imagined through negative spaces, concaves and convexes forming the eyes in a hollowed head, a masterclass in Baij’s cubist vocabulary. The portrait shared almost no physical attributes with the subject, instead focusing on distorting Tagore’s visage to give us insights into the state of his mind.

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G. R. Santosh created a hugely accomplished career without formal training in art. His abstract paintings made in the early 1960s had Kashmir as his muse, and often used encaustic and beeswax—a process he learned from Shanti Dave. Architect and designer Pinakin Patel shares his views about In the Snows of Kashmir, Santosh’s masterful painting with textural relief in a monochrome palette.

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One of India’s nine national treasure artists, Nandalal Bose (1882—1966) forged a long and glittering career as the foremost artist-pedagogue bridging the late-colonial period and the first few decades after Indian independence. He maintained an active drawing practice throughout his life, with many small sketches done on postcards that he carried around with him as a sort of visual notebook.

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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 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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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.

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Indra Dugar, unlike his illustrious father Hirachand Dugar (1898-1951), did not have any formal education in art. Born in 1918 in Jiaganj in Murshidabad, West Bengal, he sub-consciously absorbed the artistic ambience of Santiniketan where he grew up; his father was one of the earliest students at Kala Bhavana at the Visva-Bharati University. Dugar acquired art skills from his father and considered Santiniketan his alma mater. He was inspired by his father’s mentor Nandalal Bose, who saw great promise in him. Learn More

Born into a family of painters in Kolhapur, Vasant Anant Mali studied art professionally at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in the 1920s. It was here that he grasped the nuances of painting through academic realism. Working mostly in the medium of watercolour and oil, Mali keenly observed how some of his teachers, including Walter Langhammer, worked with various tools and applied bold brushstrokes with knife. Mali’s work had a forcefulness, a depth that was unique and could be seen, particularly, in portraits done by him. Learn More

Shobha Broota’s pictorial interpretation of the resonance of classical Indian ragas forms the essence of her celebrated style in which she conveys their subtle variations through minimal use of colours. Born in 1943 in New Delhi in an artistic family that inspired her to study art, Broota obtained a diploma in painting from College of Art, New Delhi, in 1964. Learn More

One of India’s most seminal modernists, Syed Haider Raza was born on 22 February 1922 in Mandla, Madhya Pradesh, and forged a new language of art by integrating Indian symbolism with Western expression. A student of Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay (1943-47), and one of the first members of the Progressive Artists’ Group, the turning point of his career was his journey to Paris in 1950 on a French government scholarship to study at École Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 1956, he became the first non-French artist to win the critic’s award, the Prix de la critique.

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