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In February, Paris' Centre Pompidou--a premier centre for modern art since its construction in 1977--mounted an extensive solo show looking back at S. H. Raza’s career in painting. It represents a historic moment for Indian modern art’s international story as it unfolded over the twentieth century, and also marked Raza's own symbolic return to the place where he stayed for most of his working life. The fertile post-independent period saw cross-cultural connections being forged by Indian artists in Europe and America on their own terms and this show is a testament to Raza’s evolving encounters with land and mythology. The curators, Catherine David and Diane Toubert, spoke to DAG highlighting some of the takeaways from this major retrospective.

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The DAG Archive has over 90,000 photographs taken by Nemai Ghosh, a bulk of which includes still photographs and behind the scenes images of films as well as candid and staged portraits of Satyajit Ray. In conjunction to these materials, DAG Archive has also acquired a set of two notebooks of Ray which contains the hand-written film scripts of <i>Ghare Baire</I> (The Home and The World, 1984) and Samapti (The Conclusion) which is one of the short films from the anthology, Teen Kanya (Three Women, 1961). Interestingly, both these films are adaptations from Rabindranath Tagore’s literary works.

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An experiential learning and apprenticeship programme for high school students in collaboration with arts education organisations, offering them a first-hand experience of working in a museum, learning about the art and history, and translating their learnings to develop museum experiences for their peers.

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Born in Madras, R. B. Bhaskaran is best known for his series on cats, and on couples, as also for his rejection of the ‘restrictive’ need to establish an Indian cultural identity through his works, which he feels is ‘an instinctive by-product of one’s work’. 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

Born into a family of artists in Lahore on 21 September 1897, M. Abdur Rahman Chughtai learnt to draw from his father, Mia Karim Baksh. He joined Mayo School of Art in Lahore in 1911, where Samarendranath Gupta, a pupil of Abanindranath Tagore, was vice-principal. He obtained a diploma in photo lithography from Mayo School in 1914, where he went on to become the head instructor in chromo-lithography. He honed his printmaking skills during visits to London in the mid-1930s and exhibited his works across Europe; he also exhibited with Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta around this time. Learn More

S. H. Raza had begun to paint using oils, moving away from his impressionistic watercolours, on his way to winning the prestigious critics’ award in 1956. Just a year before, he completed a stunning painting of Parisian rooftops, revealing not a daylight scene but one of the night, only yellow lamplight from the streets dimly silhouetting the chimneys and sloping roofs. This period of Raza’s career is somewhat lesser known than his later, tantra-inspired works, as Ashok Vajpeyi and Aman Nath explain to us.

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A visit to Taherpur, Nadia for a workshop on the practices and genealogies of Sora-making with artists Ratan Paul and Gopal Paul, and artist-writer Dipankar Parui. 

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The birth of Amrita Sher-Gil to an Indian father and Hungarian mother bequeathed to the nation one of its most incandescent artists. Known for her luminous paintings, her work changed the face of modern Indian art and paved the course it was to take in the country. In a rare sculpture of tigers made, poignantly enough, in the last year of her life, Amrita Sher-Gil is revealed as someone exploring new directions before her tragic demise in 1941.

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Born Gulam Rasool Dar in a Shia Muslim family in Srinagar in Kashmir on 20 June 1929, the artist took on his wife’s Hindu name ‘Santosh’ as his own, in a move opposing patriarchy and religion. His father’s death forced a young Gulam to work as a signboard painter, papier-mâché artist, and weaver. He learnt to paint watercolour landscapes from Dina Nath Raina in Kashmir before studying under N. S. Bendre at M. S. University, Baroda, on the recommendation of S. H. Raza. In Baroda, he produced a large body of figurative and landscape works, mainly in the cubist style. Learn More

Born in an educator’s family on 7 April 1934 in a small town in Gujarat, Natvar Bhavsar studied to be a drawing teacher and began his career in Chanasma. He then joined the C. N. School in Ahmedabad for its five-year diploma course in art offered by Sir J. J. School of Art; simultaneously, he continued to study for his master’s in teaching art. Learn More

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