One of the pioneers of surrealism in Indian modern art, Hemanta Misra was born in Sivasagar, Assam, on 13 October 1917. He went to school in his hometown and later studied at Cotton College, Guwahati, and St. Edmund’s, Shillong. As for the arts, he was self-taught, polishing his skills through a correspondence course with British artist John Hassal. Learn More
A seminal and well-known contemporary Indian sculptor, Dhruva Mistry’s art, in his own words, is a ‘dialogue of an artist as a maker pursuing enigma of an omnipresent consciousness’. Learn More
Of Goan origin, Vishwanath Nageshkar was born and raised in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, in 1910. He obtained his diploma from Sir. J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1930; he also specialised in frescos from the same institute. A contemporary of Amrita Sher-Gil, Nageshkar was one of the first Indian artists to move to Paris for his education—he studied at École National Supérieure des Beaux-Arts from 1930-35. Later, he studied at Kunstakademic in Munich, Germany, from 1938-40, and under Professor A. Strübe in Berlin, 1940-41. Learn More
Possibly the most popular academic Indian artist after Raja Ravi Varma, M. V. Dhurandhar was born in Kolhapur. An early interest in drawing led his father to admit him to Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, where he received special encouragement from its principal, John Griffiths. Learn More
Forced to paint signboards at the age of eleven when his father died, Krishna Shamrao Kulkarni battled numerous early struggles to achieve a pre-eminent place in modern Indian art. Born in a village in Belgaum in Karnataka in 1916, Kulkarni engaged with modernist techniques and mediums to create a highly individuated pictorial language. Learn More
Jeram Patel, who earned renown as an abstractionist, was among those artists who rebelled against modernistic approaches and altered the Indian art scene of the 1960s by formulating a new visual identity and method of abstraction. Learn More
Chintamoni Kar, one of the foremost modern sculptors of India, was born on 19 April 1915 in Kharagpur. He trained initially in sculpture with Giridhari Mahapatra, a traditional Oriya sthapati or temple-carver, and learnt painting under Kshitindranath Mazumdar at the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta. Learn More
Born in Bengal, Arup Das remains one of the most formidable muralists and painters of Indian modern art. He graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts Calcutta, in the 1940s. Later, in the 1960s, he became a member of All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi. Learn More
Belonging to the first generation of postcolonial Indian artists that sought cosmopolitan freedom in Paris and London during the 1950s and ’60s, Akbar Padamsee developed his images within the genres of portraiture and landscape as refracted through the prism of high modernism. Learn More
Born in 1910 in Pabna, in present-day Bangladesh, Radha Charan Bagchi graduated from College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, in traditional Indian art, oil painting, and Western academism. Abanindranath Tagore, Mukul Dey and other Bengal masters were major influences but Bagchi evolved his own artistic style. In 1951, he joined Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, as teacher, officiating twice as its principal in subsequent years. Learn More
Born in Dacca (now Dhaka) in British India, Arun Bose was a pioneer printmaker who remained on the margins of mainstream Indian art as he built his career in the West, quite like Krishna Reddy, his senior contemporary who also mentored him briefly. Learn More
One of India’s most loved artists, Jamini Roy is remembered for forging a unique Indian aesthetic for modern art by bringing together elements of traditional Bengali folk art and Kalighat patachitras, rendered in clean lines and earthy colours. Learn More