Search results for: 'DAG Modern ISBN 978 93 81217 65 8'

Steeped in sacred iconography particular to the Indian artist, Sohan Qadri (1932-2011), whose practice in Copenhagen brought him international renown, the ink and dye works represent the artist’s modernist vocabulary – minimalist, rendered in vibrant colours, with a tactile dimensionality that established him as a twentieth century painter whose legacy has impacted viewers around the world. Perhaps no other Indian artist has been as widely collected as Sohan Qadri.

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William Hodges (1744-97) was a pioneer in more ways than one. He was the first British landscape painter to visit India, and to portray scenery across the whole breadth of the Gangetic plain. As a writer, he gave the first detailed descriptions of numerous historic Indian buildings, and he theorised about the origins and evolution of Indian architectural design. His art illustrates his exploration into terrain which—in its breadth and scope—was at the time almost as unfamiliar to Indian as to Western eyes.

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Twenty years after India’s independence, Films Division, the government’s documentary and propaganda filmmaking body, was seeking to re-invent itself. It had the mandate of recording the nation’s history on film. It was also a project of moulding the citizen through films that were screened in cinema theatres, before the entertainment feature. The films covered varied subjects from development, self-reliance, social issues, to art and culture, making them an invaluable archive of the Indian state’s record of the nation’s history as a modern, progressive nation. The films remained largely unpopular, like homework, among the unwilling audience of people who waited for the entertainment film to follow the documentary. Learn More

An ancient civilisation, India was always prized for her fabled wealth—textiles, crafts, spices—her knowledge—literature, scholarship, universities—and her culture—music, dance, theatre, art. It is the only country with an unbroken tradition in each of these disciplines extending all the way back to the Indus Valley Civilisation. Ambadas Anonymous (Kalighat Pat) Arun Bose Asit Kumar Haldar Avinash Chandra B. Prabha Balraj Khanna Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Chittaprosad Company Painting D. P. Roy Chowdhury Early Views of India G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali Jamini Roy Jeram Patel K. S. Kulkarni Krishna Reddy L. Munuswamy M. F. Husain M. Suriyamoorthy Natvar Bhavsar Nikhil Biswas P. T. Reddy Paritosh Sen Prodosh Das Gupta Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Rabin Mondal Rajendra Dhawan S. G. Vasudev Sakti Burman Sanat Kar Sankho Chaudhuri Satish Sinha Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Sunayani Devi Sunil Das Sunil Madhav Sen V. Viswanadhan

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Landscape art arrived in India through travelling European artists who brought the aesthetic of painting mountains, rivers and trees against the sky and a distant horizon—nature as a subject in itself —to Indian art, where it had traditionally only formed a backdrop in narrative-driven, figural paintings. The genre remained popular throughout the nineteenth century with a great demand for landscapes of India both in Europe and among the newly anglicised elite in India. Its popularity began to wane with the advent of modernism and a growing emphasis on the human figure, but several Indian artists, a significant name among them Gopal Ghose, continued to practice the form, now absorbing a wide range of new artistic trends and influences. A.A. Almelkar Abanindranath Tagore Ambika Dhurandhar Amitava Anonymous (Company School) Anonymous (Early Bengal) Atul Bose Avinash Chandra B. C. Gue B. N. Arya Bhupen Khakhar Bijan Choudhary Bikash Bhattcharjee Bimal Dasgupta Bireswar Sen Bishnupada Roychowdhury Chittaprosad D. C. Joglekar D. J. Joshi Devraj Dakoji Devyani Krishna Dharamnarayan Dasgupta Dulal Gue E. A. Dadi Edward Cheney F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh G. S. Haldankar Ganesh Haloi Gobardhan Ash Gopal Ghose H. A. Gade Haren Das Hirachand Dugar Indra Dugar J. P. Gangooly Jamini Roy John Deschamps Jyoti Bhatt K H. Ara K. C. S. Panicker K. K. Hebba K. Laxma Gou K. S. Kulkarni Kanwal Krishna Kisory Roy Kripal Singh Shekhawat L. N. Taskar L. P. Shaw Lalit Mohan Sen Laxman Pai M. F. Husain M. V. Dhurandhar Manishi Dey Mukul Dey N. R. Sardesai N. S. Bendre Nandalal Bose Nikhil Biswas Olinto Ghilardi P. Khemraj Paramjit Singh Pestonji E. Bomanji Prokash Karmakar Prosanto Roy Radha Charan Bagchi Raja Ravi Varma Ram Kumar Ramendranath Chakravorty Ramkinkar Baij Ranen Ayan Dutta Richard Barron Robert Grindlay S. G. Thakur Singh S. K. Bakre S. L. Haldankar Satish Sinha Sudhir Khastgir Sunil Das Thomas Daniell William Carpenter William Hodges

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Much of Indian modernism is enriched by the work that some of its best known artists produced after they had left the country, choosing as home another land. F. N. Souza was among the first to leave, in 1949, to head for London, where a successful practice catapulted him to the top of Britain’s artists. He was followed, in 1950, by S. H. Raza, who settled in Paris, winning the coveted critics’ award (Prix de la critique) in 1956, while others such as Krishna Reddy (Paris and New York), S. K. Bakre (London), Sakti Burman (Paris), Avinash Chandra (London and New York), Mohan Samant (New York), Natvar Bhavsar (New York), V. Viswanadhan (Paris), Sohan Qadri (Copenhagen), Rajendra Dhawan (Paris), Eric Bowen (Oslo), Ambadas (Oslo), and Zarina Hashmi (New York), followed in the 1950s-70s. These fourteen artists, with their diverse styles and concerns in art making, are masters lauded for the sheer range of responses to their environment that their work has registered. However, the question this exhibition forefronts, as its curator Kishore Singh asks, is: ‘Does the artist’s ethnic identity mean art too has an ethnic identity?’ Ambadas Avinash Chandra Eric Bowen F. N. Souza Krishna Reddy Mohan Samant Natvar Bhavsar Rajendra Dhawan S. H. Raza S. K. Bakre Sakti Burman Sohan Qadri V. Viswanadhan Zarina Hashmi

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An artist whose eponymously named art institution groomed some important Indian modern artists such as Ram Kumar and J. Swaminathan, Sarada Charan Ukil was an early pioneer of the Bengal School. Born on 14 November 1888 in Bikrampur near present-day Dhaka, Ukil shifted later to Calcutta with his family and studied at the city’s Government Art School under Abanindranath Tagore. Learn More

Modernist sculptor Madan Lal Gupta is as much known for his constantly evolving experimental practise as for Ram Chhatpar Shilp Nyas, a trust he founded in 1989 in Varanasi for the promotion of contemporary arts and classical music, in memory of his guru, Ram Chhatpar, who passed away at the age of forty-four in 1978. Learn More

Born in 1922, pioneering modernist sculptor Ardeshir M. Davierwalla—fondly called Adi—was a pharmaceutical chemist by training; he went to school in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, and studied pharmaceutical engineering at the Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (now known as the Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute) in Bombay. Learn More

Modernist sculptor Amar Nath Sehgal was one of the earliest Indian artists to take legal action under the Indian Copyright Act defending his moral right over his work. In 1957, Sehgal created a mural for Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, on a government commission, which was pulled down without his permission or any intimation in 1979. Sehgal went to court and won the lawsuit. 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

Among the most accomplished watercolourists of modern India, Shyamal Dutta Ray was born in Ranchi, then in Bihar, and studied at Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, from 1950-55. He was a founding member of Society of Contemporary Artists in 1959, and of Painters 80, founded in 1968. Learn More