Search results for: 'national treasures of india'

One of the last proponents of the Bengal School, Sanat Kumar Chatterjee was born in 1935 in Lucknow, and grew up in various cities of British India as his father had a transferable job with Indian Railways. Encouraged by his parents, he obtained a diploma in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, in 1960. Learn More

Gogi Saroj Pal was one of the earliest women artists of India to paint the female body as a receptacle of patriarchal gaze, a trope that she has continued to explore right through the seventh decade of her life. She speaks with commendable candour in this short video on how art helped liberate her as an individual. Learn More

Born in Lahore in British India, Dhanraj Bhagat acquired a diploma in sculpture from the city’s Mayo College of Art. He began working with clay while studying but it left him uninspired as he found little individuality in its amorphous nature. It was when he got his hands on wood with its uniquely tactile qualities that he felt inspired to carve and create. Learn More

The true pioneer of cubism in India and acclaimed for his satirical works of art, Gaganendranath Tagore was born on 17 September 1867. Along with his Nobel-laureate uncle Rabindranath Tagore, and brother Abanindranath Tagore, he was at the forefront of cultural revival in Bengal in the early twentieth century; the brothers established the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta, in 1907. Learn More

Born in Bombay to eminent artist-couple Benode Behari and Leela Mukherjee, Mrinalini Mukherjee gave a new dimension to modern sculpture in India with works made in natural materials such as woven vegetable fibres of hemp. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, under artist-teacher K. G. Subramanyan, receiving a post diploma in mural design. Learn More

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Born in Karachi, a year before it became part of Pakistan, Nalini Malani’s art, unsurprisingly, is built on observing the struggles and strife of people, socio-political changes, and how she observes this. More recently, the lockdown in India on account of the corona pandemic and its impact on migrant workers has impacted her work, even prompting her to post short animations on social media platforms. Learn More

Born in Jamalpur in present day Bangladesh on 9 February 1936, Ganesh Haloi migrated with his family to Calcutta upon Partition. From 1952-56, he studied at the city’s Government College of Arts and Crafts, where he acquired his personal style of sophisticated elegance and finish. Upon graduation, he joined the Archaeological Survey of India and was assigned the documentation of the cave paintings of Ajanta from 1957-63. Learn More

Born in present-day Bangladesh, Amalnath Chakladhar belongs to that category of Bengali modernists who carved an identity uniquely their own, despite the overarching influence of the three prominent strains of modern art in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century—the Bengal School, academic training in art schools of Calcutta, and expressionism in Santiniketan. His contribution to furthering modernism in India, therefore, assumes importance for being a seminal, individual effort. Learn More

Born in Patiala, Punjab, in 1953, Ranbir Kaleka earned a diploma in painting from Punjab University’s College of Art in Chandigarh. He spent the next few years teaching at Punjab University and College of Art, New Delhi, before leaving for London on a Charles Wallace scholarship to study at Royal College of Art from 1985-87. He stayed on in London for several years and returned to India in the late 1990s. Learn More

Born in Gujarat to a family of farmers, Nagji Patel grew up making clay toys as part of playing with village children. He joined the painting course at Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, but eventually switched to sculpture, which he found less daunting than painting. He obtained an M.F.A. in sculpture in 1964 and in the same year won a travelling scholarship from the Government of India, which allowed him to visit quarries across the country and interact with stone carvers. Learn More

Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1913-1978) was a versatile artist and a lifelong adherent of the socialistic worldview. In 1943, he traveled across the famine-stricken villages of Bengal and produced realistic sketches of human suffering that were regularly published in the pages of the Communist Party journal 'People’s war'. These sketches were later compiled and published as a booklet under the title 'Hungry Bengal'. Fascinated by his artistic skills, the General Secretary of Communist Party of India, Puran Chand Joshi took Chittaprosad to the Party’s headquarters in Bombay (now Mumbai). 

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