Search results for: 'term of the month'

The wash technique has come to be associated in India with the art of the Bengal School, but the story of its origins in India takes us back to an era of rich cultural exchanges. In the early twentieth century artists like Abanindranath Tagore were trying to imagine a pan-Asian cultural identity, and they turned for inspiration to traditions from across Persia to Japan. Rabindranath Tagore's friendship with Okakura Kakuzō occasioned the arrival of several Japanese artists in Kolkata, such as Yokoyama Taikan, Hishida Shunsō and Katsuta Shōkin. While the latter found inspiration in the Hindu epics, artists in Bengal adapted techniques that were used by the Japanese, such as the wash technique or the subtle use of ink and brush. Since then, the wash technique has been interpreted widely by individual artists, offering an ethereal quality of light to their works, or, in some cases, like for Gaganendranath Tagore and Prosanto Roy, new possibilities of painting in various shades of darkness.

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The mid-twentieth century saw a churn in the practice of art in India with a number of artists beginning to explore a genre that had swept the West with its absence of figuration in favour of abstraction. The non-representational began to gain traction as artists found within it a way to express themselves purely through colour as a potent tool to communicate emotions. Abstraction emphasised the relationship between originality and expression in ways that were complex, leading one to debate about the eventual goal of art. Ambadas, Krishna Reddy, Sohan Qadri, Zarina Hashmi, Rajendra Dhawan

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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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Shown at the Shanghai Biennale, exhibited in New York, widely admired for his consistency throughout his career, Rabin Mondal’s excoriating paintings are a savage indictment of social and political ills. A reticent, reserved artist, Mondal’s works offer a scathing commentary on the pursuit and abuse of power. A primal, primordial figuration describes his work in which people in positions of authority are rendered vulnerable because of the very power they aspire to. Their contorted features and clawed hands and feet represent their venality. Strong outlines, naked brushstrokes and potent use of green and red characterise most his work.

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Born in 1902 in Tripura, Ramendranath Chakravorty went to the Government College of Art in Calcutta in 1919 but left it in 1921 to join the newly founded Kala Bhavana at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Soon after graduation, he began his teaching career, first at Kalashala at Andhra National Art Gallery in Machilipatnam, and then at Kala Bhavana. He then joined Government School of Art, Calcutta, as a teacher in 1929, when Mukul Dey, the pioneer of dry point etching in India, was its principal. In 1943-46, Chakravorty was the school’s officiating principal when he set up its graphics department. Eventually, he became the school principal in 1949. Learn More

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The exhibition Tantra on the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth Century Indian Art is a pioneering attempt to gather together works of sixteen prominent Indian artists under the single thematic rubric of the transient but least definable phases of contemporary art in the last century. The exhibition features the artworks, inspirations, and experiments, of artists that had a sustained relationship with tantra philosophy, its vivid, abstract, sacred symbols, or their personal spiritual illuminations. Biren De G. R. Santosh Gogi Saroj Pal J. Swaminathan Jyoti Bhatt K. C. S. Paniker Manu Parekh P. T. Reddy Prabhakar Barwe R. B. Bhaskaran S. H. Raza Satish Gujral Shobha Broota Sohan Qadri Sunil Das V. Viswanadhan

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When we launched the Silver Series in May 2020 as our attempt to stay engaged with art-lovers no longer able to visit our galleries, we were unsure of the response. But the feedback we received was heartening, and it was backed by commensurate sales to prove that the art-loving fraternity supported the initiative and gave it a resounding thumbs-up. J. Sultan Ali Altaf Amit Ambalal Amitava Anonymous (Early Bengal) Anonymous (Kalighat Pat) Anonymous (Portraiture) K. H. Ara Prabhakar Barwe Bikash Bhattacharjee Nikhil Biswas Nandalal Bose Eric Bowen Shobha Broota Sakti Burman Avinash Chandra Jogen Chowdhury Sunil Das Prodosh Das Gupta Shanti Dave Rajendra Dhawan M. V. Dhurandhar K. Laxma Goud Satish Gujral Zarina Hashmi K. K. Hebbar M. F. Husain George Keyt Krishen Khanna K. S. Kulkarni Ram Kumar Rabin Mondal S. Nandagopal Laxman Pai Gogi Saroj Pal Madhvi Parekh Jeram Patel Ganesh Pyne Sohan Qadri A. A. Raiba S. H. Raza P. T. Reddy Rekha Rodwittiya Jamini Roy G. R. Santosh Paritosh Sen F. N. Souza Anupam Sud Ramgopal Vijaivargiya

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G. R. Santosh created a hugely accomplished career without formal training in art. His abstract paintings made in the early 1960s had Kashmir as his muse, and often used encaustic and beeswax—a process he learned from Shanti Dave. Architect and designer Pinakin Patel shares his views about In the Snows of Kashmir, Santosh’s masterful painting with textural relief in a monochrome palette.

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Sohan Qadri was truly a global artist whose travels and practice spanned India, its Himalayan neighbours, Africa, Europe and Canada. His paintings can be summed up as yantras that serve as visual meditation tools. Invocation – 27 is a vibrant sea of yellow ochre with a band of blue in the middle. A captivating work, Geeti Sen explains, the painting serves to offer viewers a profound experience of transformation and self-discovery.

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Prabhakar Barwe’s Eighty-Five Safety Pins is a pioneering work that merges technology and traditional art. Created in 1991 using graphic design software on an Apple Macintosh, Barwe explored the concept of pixels, a hallmark of the digital era, while incorporating his signature enamel paint. This innovative approach reflects his curiosity about embracing the unknown future and reinterpreting it artistically. By abstracting the safety pin from its conventional form, Barwe invites viewers to reconsider its essence, offering an open-ended visual experience that challenges preconceived notions and encourages alternative perspectives. Art connoisseur Shireen Gandhy, a friend of the late artist, takes us behind the making of this extraordinary painting.

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