Search results for: 'Books on the visual history of modern Ind'

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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Often described as ‘Poetry in Stone’, the Taj Mahal was laid out between 1631-43 by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is the architectural elements of the Taj complex that grab the most attention, but in fact the garden is the heart of the complex . The visitors today are so transfixed by the Taj itself that they remember very little of the garden. DAG Archive attempts to illustrate the  life and ‘afterlife’ of the Taj gardens, once its control was taken over by the British. This archive deep dive showcases the objects from A. E. P. Griessen’s (1875–1935) collection.

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Art Lab by DAG’s Museums Programme is a pop-up art exhibition of facsimiles of works from the DAG Museum Collection that travels to schools and introduces students to modes of visual learning. After two successful iterations in CBSE and ICSE schools in Kolkata, Art Lab travelled to its first Bengali medium West Bengal Board school—Barisha Janakalyan Vidyapith for Girls. Through three days of workshops spread across two weeks, the students interacted with the artworks, learnt the basics of research, delved into historical material, and developed their own creative projects. Take a peek at some of the wonderful projects they curated as they took over the exhibition and made it their own.

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The exhibition brings together important and unusual works of art that span a wide range of genres, forms, periods and styles. They are grouped by genre, of abstract art, figurative art, landscape art, portraiture and still-life. Each thematic arrangement features a select collection of artworks from the artist’s mature period, several of which are of substantial art historical significance. Ambadas S. K. Bakre Avinash Chandra V. S. Gaitonde Ganesh Haloi Hemanta Misra Jeram Patel Sohan Qadri S. H. Raza Krishna Reddy G. R. Santosh Laxman Shreshtha Figurative J. Sultan Ali A. A. Almelkar Amitava Radha Charan Bagchi Bikash Bhattacharjee Nikhil Biswas Sakti Burman Chittaprosad Bijan Choudhary Prodosh Das Gupta Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Biren De S. Dhanpal M. V. Dhurandhar Shyamal Dutta Ray Early Bengal (Anonymous) K. Laxma Goud Satish Gujral M. F. Husain Kalighat Pat (Anonymous) Prokash Karmakar George Keyt Krishen Khanna P. Khemraj K. S. Kulkarni Ram Kumar Kshitindranath Majumdar Tyeb Mehta Anjolie Ela Menon Rabin Mondal M. Reddappa Naidu Badri Narayan Navjot Laxman Pai Gogi Saroj Pal Gieve Patel Ganesh Pyne Ravi Varma School (Anonymous) P. T. Reddy Jamini Roy Paritosh Sen Sunil Madhav Sen B. Vithal Landscape Akbar Padamsee Kisory Roy F. N. Souza J. Swaminathan Portraits Anonymous Jyoti Bhatt Sankho Chaudhuri Jogen Chowdhury Sunil Das Olinto Ghilardi Surendran Nair M. F. Pithawalla A. A. Raiba Himmat Shah Rabindranath Tagore Still-life K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar B. Prabha Jehangir Sabavala S. G. Thakur singh

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Among all attempts by foreign artists to present a complete view of India, none is so focused on people as the work of François Baltazard Solvyns, who lived in Calcutta for a decade starting in 1791. While picking up odd jobs, he embarked on an ambitious project to produce a comprehensive survey of ‘the manners, customs, and dresses, of the Hindus’. The first edition contained 250 hand-coloured etchings and was published by Solvyns between 1796 and 1799.

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An ‘India wanderer’, as he liked to call himself, Gopal Ghose spent his formative years away from Calcutta, where he was born on 5 December 1913. His art training began at the Maharaja School of Arts, Jaipur. From 1935-38, Ghose studied at the Government College of Art and Craft, Madras. Once, while painting on the Marina beach in Madras, he caught the attention of C. Rajagopalachari—statesman, activist, writer and leader of the Indian National Congress—who offered to arrange his further studies abroad, which the college authorities, however, did not permit. Learn More

Shown at the Shanghai Biennale, exhibited in New York, widely admired for his consistency throughout his career, Rabin Mondal’s excoriating paintings are a savage indictment of social and political ills. A reticent, reserved artist, Mondal’s works offer a scathing commentary on the pursuit and abuse of power. A primal, primordial figuration describes his work in which people in positions of authority are rendered vulnerable because of the very power they aspire to. Their contorted features and clawed hands and feet represent their venality. Strong outlines, naked brushstrokes and potent use of green and red characterise most his work.

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Born in 1902 in Tripura, Ramendranath Chakravorty went to the Government College of Art in Calcutta in 1919 but left it in 1921 to join the newly founded Kala Bhavana at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Soon after graduation, he began his teaching career, first at Kalashala at Andhra National Art Gallery in Machilipatnam, and then at Kala Bhavana. He then joined Government School of Art, Calcutta, as a teacher in 1929, when Mukul Dey, the pioneer of dry point etching in India, was its principal. In 1943-46, Chakravorty was the school’s officiating principal when he set up its graphics department. Eventually, he became the school principal in 1949. Learn More

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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

As one of India’s most well-known artists, Tyeb Mehta still commands our attention for his commitment to experimentation. His ‘Diagonal series’ established him as a dynamic figure within the world of modern art, but how did this diagonal method come to be an important tool of composition in the last century? It all started with the invention of another compoitional tool called the 'rule of thirds'. Read below as we explore the origins of this artistic tool and see how it has evolved over time.

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