Search results for: 'Histories in the Making Photographing Indian Monuments 1855 1920'

One of India’s most important artists, Chittaprosad recorded pivotal political and social movements in the country, such as the Great Bengal Famine of 1943-44 and its fallout, in heart-wrenching sketches and drawings, alongside protests against colonialism, economic exploitation, urban poverty and depravity, just as beautifully as the many drawings, linocuts and scraper board illustrations he made for children, recording a beatific phase of plenitude and family values, and involving himself with marionettes for their entertainment.

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Born in Bombay, Pestonji E. Bomanji joined Sir J. J. School of Art at the age of thirteen. While there, the principal, John Griffiths, identified his talent and appointed him a draughtsman on an expedition to the Ajanta caves in 1872, which he came to head in 1880. Though Bomanji initially wanted to be a sculptor, his interest in portraiture was triggered after 1877, when Griffiths recommended him as an apprentice to Valentine Prinsep, a visiting artist; he went on to train under John Lockwood Kipling. Learn More

An influential artist who is known for her richly detailed oils and watercolours, Arpita Singh was born in Calcutta in 1937. She studied art at Delhi Polytechnic (now College of Art) from 1954-59, and then joined the Government of India’s cottage industries restoration programme in 1959, which allowed her to meet weavers and artisans. Learn More

One of India’s most revered ‘non-objective’ painters—he preferred that term over ‘abstraction’—Vasudeo Santu Gaitonde was born in Nagpur in 1924. He received his diploma in painting from Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in 1948. Impressed by his work, the members of the Progressive Artists’ Group—formed in 1947—pulled him into their meetings. The strength of his talent was soon recognised elsewhere—he won the first prize of the Young Asian Artists Association in Tokyo in 1957, and a John D. Rockefeller III Fund fellowship in 1964. 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

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

N. R. Sardesai was born in 1885 in Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, and completed his early education at the Ratnagiri School of Industry. Here, he studied carpentry and drawing in 1906, before joining Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, for formal training in art. Thereafter, he began work as a drawing teacher in a school in Fort, Bombay. In 1915, he had a short stint as a drawing teacher at his alma mater too. Learn More

Madhvi Parekh was born and raised in Sanjaya, a village in Gujarat. Though she is self-taught and took up painting only in 1964, inspired by her artist-husband Manu Parekh, art remained a part of her consciousness through childhood memories, her family’s rituals such as the traditional floor designs of rangoli, popular folk stories, and simple village life. While expecting their first child, Parekh’s husband gifted her a book on drawing exercises by Paul Klee, and soon she was taking the first steps towards creating her own art vocabulary. Learn More

Born in Nashik, Maharashtra, M. S. Joshi studied at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay, in the 1930s. Joshi combined his training in academic realism with a sense of vitality, precision and aesthetics to reveal India’s rich cityscapes and landscapes in his watercolour and gouache works. There was immense depth in the rendering of his subjects, which included people, places, architectural elements, all done in a subdued yet textured palette. Learn More

A painter with a strikingly elegant bearing, Jehangir Sabavala was born on 23 August 1922 in an affluent Parsi family in Bombay and grew up in an intellectually charged environment. He studied at Elphinstone College, Bombay, before graduating from Sir J. J. School of Art in 1944. Thereafter, he studied at some of the leading art schools of Europe—The Heatherly School of Art, London (1945-47), Académie André Lhote, Paris (1948-51), Académie Julian, Paris (1953-54), and Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Paris (1957). Learn More

Francis Newton Souza, born on 12 April 1924, was expelled from school, then from his college—Sir J. J. School of art, Bombay—and later, as he insisted on saying, from his own country. Born in Goa, Souza’s catholic mother brought him up to be a priest, but he showed early signs of rebellion that would become an integral part of his life.

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Born in Faridpur in present-day Bangladesh, Bijan Chowdhury moved to Calcutta to study at the Government School of Art, but due to his leftist activities, was expelled. He then went to the Government Institute of Arts, Dacca, headed by his erstwhile teacher, Zainul Abedin, from where he graduated in 1953. Learn More