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A great number of short-lived but nonetheless significant art movements arose in India over the twentieth century as Indian artists struggled with evolving or arriving at their identity as modern artists and an appropriate visual language of Indian modernism. One of the most significant amongst these is the artist collective, Group 1890, formed in 1962 with twelve young artists, led by the artist and art critic J. Swaminathan. The group consisted of J. Swaminathan, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, Ambadas, Jyoti Bhatt, Raghav Kaneria, M. Reddeppa Naidu, Rajesh Mehra, Eric Bowen, S. G. Nikam and Balkrishna Patel. Ambadas Balkrishna Patel Eric Bowen Gulammohammed Sheikh Himmat Shah J. swaminathan Jeram Patel Jyoti Bhatt Raghav Kaneria Rajesh Mehra Reddappa Naidu S. G. Nikam

Ethnographic mapping and documentation of a vast country like India was an important part of the political and economic expansion of the East India Company from the middle of the seventeenth century onwards.

The series of aquatint prints known as Oriental Scenery represent the single largest and most impressive project by English artists to depict Indian architecture and landscape. Thomas Daniell (1749-1840) and his nephew William Daniell (1769-1837) travelled extensively in India between 1786 and 1793. On their return to Britain they produced many paintings, drawings and prints based on the sketches they had made while travelling. The aquatints were issued in pairs between March 1795 and December 1808. Subscribers who purchased all of them could assemble them into six volumes, each with 24 prints, making up a total of 144 – of which half are shown here.

Works of art made by Indian artists for Western patrons in the early colonial period are what we now call Company Painting. The artists, who might otherwise have worked for an Indian court, sought new markets among those employed in various capacities by the European trading companies, and especially the British East India Company. Some patrons supplied the artists with new materials such as European-made paper and transparent watercolour pigments, and expressed preferences regarding subject matter, leading to new departures in both style and substance in Indian art. One of the most delightful genres of Company Painting was natural history: images of India’s plants, animals, and birds. Company Painting Company Paintings British Era

In a career spanning four decades, Amitava’s location as an artist has determined the authority that he brings to his practice. As an artist studying and working in the 1960s, Amitava Das experienced a decade of fragmented locii. The ’60s, the period of his education at the College of Art, was the decade of wars, fiscal difficulty and an uncertain polity in the wake of the death of Jawaharlal Nehru. Further, as a second generation pravasi (non-residing Indian) Bengali, the roiling political violence of West Bengal’s Naxal movement came to him through the filter of poetry, film and art—much as he would have received the existential writing of Camus, Genet and Rilke. Through the 1960s and ’70s, small groups of artists and filmmakers in different pockets in India had a heightened response: the state of the nation found an uncanny echo in the language of modernism, of the artist’s isolation and purity even within a state of uncertainty.

Often described as ‘Poetry in Stone’, the Taj Mahal was laid out between 1631-43 by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal. It is the architectural elements of the Taj complex that grab the most attention, but in fact the garden is the heart of the complex . The visitors today are so transfixed by the Taj itself that they remember very little of the garden. DAG Archive attempts to illustrate the  life and ‘afterlife’ of the Taj gardens, once its control was taken over by the British. This archive deep dive showcases the objects from A. E. P. Griessen’s (1875–1935) collection.

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.

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?