Search results for: 'sunrise time at Taj Mahal on December 18, 2025'

Prokash Karmakar learnt painting at his father, artist-teacher Prahlad Karmakar’s atelier, till the socio-political turmoil of the 1940s and his father’s early death put an end to it. After his matriculation, Karmakar joined Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, but quit soon thereafter for reasons of poverty. In between, he designed book covers and worked as an illustrator for his livelihood; he even joined the army but absconded after two years, driven by his desire to paint. Learn More

The search for abstraction in Indian art in the early years of Independence was born out of a desire among artists to attain an independent idiom of modernism. Rooted in the country’s philosophical and religious aesthetic, Prabhakar Kolte is among the leading practitioners engaged in this quest. A master of poetic and metaphysical abstractionism, Kolte received a diploma in painting from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1968. Initially, he freelanced as an illustrator, also working as a designer at Bombay Dyeing. Learn More

Born in Amritsar on 23 February 1935, Paramjit Singh studied art at Delhi Polytechnic from where he completed a diploma in 1958. About a decade later, he went to Norway to study printmaking at Atelier Nord. Learn More

Born in Bombay, Mohan Samant showed early proficiency for both music and art. A lifelong player of sarangi—an Indian bowed, string instrument—Samant chose painting as a career and obtained a diploma from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1952. In the early 1950s, he was influenced by his teacher Shankar Palsikar, a painter of the traditional school, but moved soon towards an expressionistic mode in an attempt to discover his own style, fusing the expressive, the primitive and the abstract in his art. Learn More

Born in a middle-class Bengali family on 21 June 1940, Bikash Bhattacharjee gathered his visual and intellectual ideals from the politically charged atmosphere of Calcutta during his growing up years. Learn More

Achutan Ramachandran Nair, popularly known as A. Ramachandran, was born in 1935 in Attingal, Kerala. He studied Malayalam literature before pursuing art at Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Under the tutelage of Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij, he developed both the muralist’s monumentality of scale and the intimate ambit of the miniaturist. Learn More

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March to Freedom re-interprets the well-known story of the Indian freedom struggle and anticolonial movement through works of art and some historic artefacts. Drawn from the collections of DAG, they range from eighteenth and nineteenth century European paintings and prints, to lesser known works by Indian artists that merit greater recognition, alongside some iconic pieces. Rather than following the usual chronological path, the story is structured around eight themes. Each represents one arena, or stage, on which the anti-colonial struggle took place, to expand the story beyond politics, politicians, and battles (which also feature). Conceived to commemorate and celebrate the 75th anniversary of India’s independence, this visual journey seeks to do more. For even as we remember the struggles, the sacrifices, and the stories, such anniversaries are also occasions for reflection, including upon the scholarship that has developed on South Asian history. Some of the latter may be familiar to academics, or those with special interests. For most of the rest of us, our knowledge of this past is derived in large part from hazy memories of school lessons, which change from one generation to the next, and are influenced by concurrent national politics. We also learn from narratives on offer through public channels or in the media, to mark moments of national remembrance or controversy.

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Shanti Dave’s abstracts resemble—at first—the familiar and the unknown. There are writings, figures, deities, forms and shapes that resonate with what we seem to know. If the language is indecipherable, perhaps it belongs to some ancient texts lost to history. Is this his ode to a civilisation that existed in the past, or a prophesy of one to come? Is it a world hidden underwater? Or perhaps one alien to us because it comes from some other planet? Are these tombstones, or markers, of some mythological or historical realm?

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Nine artists find special mention in India as ‘art treasures, having regard to their artistic and aesthetic value’, a directive by the Archaeological Survey of India in the 1970s. Spanning a period of one hundred years of art practice, these artists represent a diversity of art traditions and movements but are unified by one common thread: a return to Indian roots through context, theme, subject, and an engagement with identity.

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One of the earliest British artists to arrive in India on a painting expedition, Thomas Daniell is one half of the famous painting duo, the Daniells, the other being his nephew William, with whom he created some of the earliest and most celebrated views of India.

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Perhaps the least celebrated of the nine National Treasure artists of India, Sailoz Mookherjea was one of the earliest modern painters of the country, and also one of the earliest to study in Paris, in 1937.

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