Search results for: 'British artist'

This exhibition looks at the diverse range, moods and styles that primitivism has taken in India, some artists practicing entirely in that style, while others experimenting with it in part, or sporadically. One can count simplicity and a move away from sophistication as key components, as also an inclination or at least a nod towards the folk. The exhibition does not attempt to be a comprehensive survey of India’s primitivists—there are others who would bear inclusion—but is an attempt to understand a body of work and how, given its Western countenance, it can be understood in the Indian context. More than anything else, it offers a clearer view than in the past of what primitivism might mean in the context of modern Indian art. Amrita Sher-Gil F. N. Souza George Keyt Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali Jamini Roy Jogen Chowdhury K. G. Subramanyan K. S. Kulkarni M. F. Husain Madhvi Parekh Mohan Samant Rabin Mondal Rabindranath Tagore Ramkinkar Baij Sunayani Devi

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

Artists have often formulated their theories and observations to analyse and become aware of the cognitive modes of art making, and to associate with broader contemporaneous art movements. These manifestos become a window into an artist’s process. Prabhakar Barwe’s seminal treatise, <i>Kora Canvas</I> (The Blank Canvas, 1989), exemplifies his deep understanding of the fundamental elements of art and keen observations of nature and his surroundings.

The idea of primitivism centres on the wish to identify with, or respond to, elements of a society that are deemed ‘primitive’. In artistic terms, it is about rejecting realism, simplifying technique and reducing the formal means of expression to a ‘primitive’ state. The term itself is borrowed from discussions of Western art, where high-profile examples include the images of Tahiti and its people made in the 1890s by Paul Gauguin, and responses to African sculpture by Pablo Picasso in 1906-09. The second thread of primitivism—the reduction of formal means—is best exemplified by the ‘cut-outs’ made by Henri Matisse in the 1940s.

The twentieth century was marked by two important decades—the 1910s, when the Bengal School saw the establishment of a revivalist practice that came to signify Indian modern art in general; and the 1950s, when a newly independent nation put its colonised past behind it and embraced a triumphant modernism. A. A. RAIBA ADI DAVIERWALLA AVINASH CHANDRA BABURAO SADWELKAR BADRI NARAYAN BIREN DE CHITTAPROSAD D. P. ROY CHOWDHURY DEVYANI KRISHNA DHANRAJ BHAGAT G. R. SANTOSH GANESH PYNE HAREN DAS Indra Dugar J. SULTAN ALI JYOTI BHATT K C S PANIKER K S Kulkarni K. G. SUBRAMANYAN K. K. HEBBAR KANWAL KRISHNA KISORY ROY KRISHEN KHANNA KRISHNA REDDY Laxman Pai M. F. HUSAIN MOHAN SAMANT NANDALAL BOSE NIKHIL BISWAS P. T. REDDY PARITOSH SEN S. H. RAZA S. K. BAKRE SAKTI BURMAN SHANTI DAVE SUNIL DAS SUNIL MADHAV SEN VISHWANATH NAGESHKAR

Chittaprosad couldn’t have created a more germane work in honour of the people who successfully fought their oppressors to create an independent nation. A close examination of his masterpiece, Bangladesh War, reveals the artist’s use of symbols of hope against persecution and domination, art collector and philanthropist Nadia Samdani tells us.

Gogi Saroj Pal is one of India's most important artists working with the female body.

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.

Drawing from the Greek word skhedios, meaning ‘to extemporize’, the sketch presents an interiorized, psychological landscape against classical painting’s heroic, externalized construction of the painted tableau. For many artists, sketching and drawing suggest initial explorations for capturing moods, relations and subjectivities that can be expanded through later applications of paint and texture.

Artists may be anonymous but their times are not. Art historian and curator Dr. Tapati Guha-Thakurta takes us through the Early Bengal oil paintings from the 19th and early 20th century on display at DAG, New Delhi.

Also known as Company School, this genre is the Indo-European style of painting made in India by Indian artists, most of whom worked under the patronage of the East India Company. Focusing on a spectacular painting, William Dalrymple takes us through a journey of this neglected yet outstanding genre of art from nineteenth century India.