Search results for: 'Ray Working in His Study'

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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Born on 26 March 1934 in the village of Valod, Gujarat, Haku Shah absorbed deeply the way of life, culture and beliefs of the pastoral and the folk, which he amply manifested in his works. This understanding also moulded him into a cultural anthropologist who brought global academic focus on tribal and folk arts and culture of India. Learn More

Jamini Roy’s was an art of quiet resistance that assimilated so seamlessly into the folk and craft traditions of Bengal that it did not cause any discernible ripples among the prevalent artistic mood. All around him, art was being nurtured, questioned, uprooted—it was, after all, a period when nationalist feelings ran high and a search for an indigenous lexicon was paramount—but Jaminida’s ability to look to tradition for a modern approach, though revolutionary, was instinctively natural and organic. It was art that everyone understood and wanted to take home. No wonder Jamini babu became a household name in his native Calcutta and went on to be honoured as one of the pre-eminent National Treasure artists of the country whose art has the greatest acceptance of any known Indian modernist.

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One of the nine National Treasure artists of India, Russia-born Nicholas Roerich was not just a painter but a stage designer for ballets, an explorer, writer, and philosopher. As a painter, he is best remembered for his ethereal paintings of the mist-laden and wispy Himalayas, done mostly in tempera or oil. These paintings remain some of the best works celebrating the mighty mountain range. Learn More

Curator Jesal Thacker and art writer Meera Menezes speak about Shanti Dave’s art practice and choice of medium that allowed several elements to come together in his encaustic paintings and layered watercolours.

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A translation of Rani Chanda's (nee Dey) essay/ memoir of Nandalal Bose, her teacher, and his friendship with Mukul Dey (Chanda's elder brother) and Jamini Roy. 

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‘Raza was in some ways an earth painter—someone to whom earth mattered both as a constant presence and an irrepressible memory.’ Ashok Vajpeyi looks at the natural mechanics of Sayed Haider Raza’s abstractions, tracing his relationship with landscape and art.

 

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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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Chittaprosad (1915-1978) was born in Naihati, in present-day West Bengal, but was a student at the Chittagong Government College in the 1930s, which is in Bangladesh. Bengal was divided in his lifetime—in 1947—but its eastern wing went through further upheaval as East Pakistan launched regular protests against the hegemony of the West Pakistani ruling elite, especially on the question of language. In recognition of their struggle, 21 February is celebrated as International Mother Language Day and we mark the occasion by looking closer ‘Bangladesh War’—an iconic work by the artist.

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Bhattacharjee’s A Social Gathering is a fine example of his work undertaken during the 1970s and ’80s, combining photorealistic elements with a subtle, dreamlike surrealism. The painting portrays a group of fashionable, high-society women in their finest sarees and jewellery surrounding what appears to be a leader dressed in a simple saree.

While she exudes power, the remaining women exude wealth.

Their most striking feature, however, is an absence of eyes—dark shadows implying where they would have been present had the artist chosen to paint them—that results in a haunting, otherworldly atmosphere.

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At first glance, J. Swaminathan’s paintings appear disarmingly simple. The longer you look, the more expansive they become.

In this work from his celebrated Bird, Tree Series, Swaminathan reduces the landscape to its elemental forms—a bird, a tree, a glowing field of colour—creating a visual language that feels at once primal, meditative, and strikingly modern. Painted during the 1980s, the work belongs to a significant phase in the artist’s practice when he moved away from illusionistic depth and towards flattened forms, symbolic motifs, and intuitive space.

For Swaminathan, art was not bound by ideology or narrative, but offered a way of experiencing life itself. The bird and tree here are more than natural forms; they become quiet cosmic presences suspended within a luminous red expanse. Meaning emerges not through description, but through rhythm, colour, balance, and stillness.

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The mid-twentieth century saw a churn in the practice of art in India with a number of artists beginning to explore a genre that had swept the West with its absence of figuration in favour of abstraction. The non-representational began to gain traction as artists found within it a way to express themselves purely through colour as a potent tool to communicate emotions. Abstraction emphasised the relationship between originality and expression in ways that were complex, leading one to debate about the eventual goal of art. Ambadas, Krishna Reddy, Sohan Qadri, Zarina Hashmi, Rajendra Dhawan

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