Search results for: 'Prosanto t'

Any new exhibition brings with it a frisson of excitement, but by any measure India Modern: Narratives From 20th Century Indian Art has been extra special. Most art lovers take Indian modernism for granted—but how many can truly claim to know what it really means. For too many years, the term has been loosely used, with very little awareness of what it includes, or omits. What the West understands and takes as a given is something that in India still remains a mystery, perhaps because art in India cannot strictly be viewed from the same trope as Western art. Perhaps this is true of most countries, but it is especially true of colonised nations where new engagements with art in the West were imposed without the benefit of growing their own local practices organically. This hybrid custom developed at various levels, which makes it exciting when viewed from some distance, but also imposes a challenge. Therefore the question: What does modernism in Indian art imply? Akbar Padamsee Ambadas Anjolie Ela Menon Avinash Chandra B. Prabha Bikash Bhattacharjee Bimal Dasgupta Biren De Dhanraj Bhagat Dharamnarayan Dasgupta F. N. Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi Ganesh Pyne George Keyt Gieve Patel H.A. Gade Himmat Shah J. Sultan Ali J. Swaminathan Jehangir Sabavala Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury K. G. Subramanyan K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. S. Kulkarni Krishen Khanna Laxman Goud Laxman Pai M. F. Husain Manjit Bawa P. Khemraj P.T. Reddy Rabin Mondal Ram Kumar S. K. Bakre S.H. Raza Sakti Burman Sohan Qadri Somnath Hore Sunil Das

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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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An artist whose eponymously named art institution groomed some important Indian modern artists such as Ram Kumar and J. Swaminathan, Sarada Charan Ukil was an early pioneer of the Bengal School. Born on 14 November 1888 in Bikrampur near present-day Dhaka, Ukil shifted later to Calcutta with his family and studied at the city’s Government Art School under Abanindranath Tagore. Learn More

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

For a socially responsive artist like Nataraj Sharma, the frenzied pace of change in contemporary times coupled with his upbringing in vastly different cultural milieus of India, Egypt, England, and Zambia, has proved to be the proverbial grist for his art mill. Learn More

Modernist sculptor Madan Lal Gupta is as much known for his constantly evolving experimental practise as for Ram Chhatpar Shilp Nyas, a trust he founded in 1989 in Varanasi for the promotion of contemporary arts and classical music, in memory of his guru, Ram Chhatpar, who passed away at the age of forty-four in 1978. Learn More

Well-known for his landscape paintings, Kisory Roy was inspired to take up the arts by his father, who worked for the railways and was an occasional painter. Winning a school competition led Roy to the Government School of Art, Calcutta, where he studied from 1931-37. Under Mukul Dey, he learnt to work in several mediums like watercolour, oil, charcoal, and crayon. Learn More

The Kalighat temple came up in Calcutta in 1809, drawing communities of traditional artisans who began to produce pats or paintings on religious and mythological themes, sold to the pilgrims as souvenirs. Traditionally painted on cloth accompanied by vocal renditions of the illustrated, these pats were now produced by the largely anonymous pat makers, or patuas, on paper—cheap and easily accessible—in response to urban needs. They remained popular till the early decades of the twentieth century. Learn More

Jogesh Chandra Seal was an active member of the enthusiastic art scene of Calcutta in the early decades of the twentieth century. However, due to his short life of thirty-one years, he could not leave behind a comprehensive body of work. His academic oil paintings, Untitled (Disappointed), 1919, and Lady Lighting a Diya, 1921, have recently appeared at international auctions, bringing spotlight on this accomplished artist who was closely associated with the values of the Bengal School of painting. Learn More

A large number of anonymous oils on religious and mythological themes began to emerge in Bengal in the late eighteenth–early nineteenth century from the French colony of Chandernagore and the Dutch colony of Chinsurah. Variously called French or Dutch Bengal oils, they also came from other areas like Chitpur and Garanhata localities of Calcutta and thus came to be known as Early Bengal Oils. Learn More

Hailing from Tripura, Dharmanarayan Dasgupta remained almost entirely within the fold of the Calcutta art world throughout his life. He trained at Santiniketan, from where he received his diploma in fine arts in 1961. Learn More

An intrepid traveller, Devayani Krishna’s journey into art began at a very early age in Indore. Learn More