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Are the histories of art and fashion distinct from each other? Even a cursory glimpse at the contemporary art landscape—on view during occasions such as the India Art Fair, 2023—tells us otherwise. Fabrics, textiles and weaving practices are being increasingly incorporated into the body of works produced by artists today. They bring with them a host of connotations, historical narratives and sensorial memories that working with other media does not. Uthra Rajgopal, a curator and collection adviser for museums, spoke with DAG briefly on the practice of collecting textiles for museums, their historical significance as artworks as well as trading commodities from South Asia, and how contemporary artists are responding to this complex colonial legacy through their own interventions.  

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Art Lab by DAG’s Museums Programme is a pop-up art exhibition of facsimiles of works from the DAG Museum Collection that travels to schools and introduces students to modes of visual learning. After two successful iterations in CBSE and ICSE schools in Kolkata, Art Lab travelled to its first Bengali medium West Bengal Board school—Barisha Janakalyan Vidyapith for Girls. Through three days of workshops spread across two weeks, the students interacted with the artworks, learnt the basics of research, delved into historical material, and developed their own creative projects. Take a peek at some of the wonderful projects they curated as they took over the exhibition and made it their own.

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A landmark DAG exhibition, the second edition of Masterpieces of Indian Art at India Art Fair offered a microcosm of museum-quality works by well-known masters. Catch a glimpse of some of the masterpieces in this truly extraordinary exhibition. Learn More

As one of India’s most well-known artists, Tyeb Mehta still commands our attention for his commitment to experimentation. His ‘Diagonal series’ established him as a dynamic figure within the world of modern art, but how did this diagonal method come to be an important tool of composition in the last century? It all started with the invention of another compoitional tool called the 'rule of thirds'. Read below as we explore the origins of this artistic tool and see how it has evolved over time.

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The Devi or the female power in Hindu mythology appears in various avatars in our everyday lives—as idols during the puja, on covers of magazines, product labels, calendars and posters. The modern history of visualising the Devi goes back to naturalistic depictions in oil paintings by the Early Bengal artists, which were surpassed in popularity and fame by Raja Ravi Varma and his studio. His representation, however, was regarded as too human-like by artists of the Bengal School in the early twentieth century, who created idealised forms based on a synthesis of classical visual traditions. In the twentieth century, we find artists responding to distinctive traits of the goddess to portray specific aspects of her power, or to convey the artist's own relationship with divinity. Few artists who have turned to Hindu myths have been able to escape the temptation to interpret the female power in their own way, and the diversity in style, medium, and mood is a testament to that.

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One of the most distinguished families in Bengal, the Tagores exercised unparalleled influence over the cultural landscape of the region. The Nobel Laureate, Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941), and two of his nephews, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) and Abanindranath Tagore (1871 - 1951) were recognised as India’s National Art Treasure artists. Sunayani Devi (1875 -1962), their sister, is regarded as one of modern India’s first women painters known by name. Her lyrical paintings and embroideries often looked inward to an imagined world of fables and myths. At the turn of the twentieth century, we see Abanindranath emerging as the founder of the Bengal School as he envisioned a new Indian art that was free of colonial influence, rooted in pan-Asianism. Gaganendranath, on the other hand, was a prolific satirist and cartoonist, who imagined new forms and perspectives inspired by Cubism. Together they formed the influential Indian Society of Oriental Art in 1907, while Rabindranath’s school and university at Santiniketan would continue to shape modern art in Bengal for generations to come.

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Shobha Broota is often described as among the most enigmatic artists of her generation. Her strength lies in ‘simplicity’, which she has used dexterously to explore the most complex of subjects in her art, making her a pioneer in choosing abstraction when very few women artists of India were doing so. Learn More

The Delhi Durbars were a series of coronation events held by the British in India which formally declared the British monarch as the Emperor or Empress of India. They took place thrice—first, in 1887, acknowledging Queen Victoria as the Empress of India, followed by one in 1903, for King Edward VII, and finally in 1911 for King George V, which saw the monarch’s attendance in person.

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India’s return to Singapore to participate in Art Stage Singapore 2016 was fuelled by the strong curiosity it aroused the previous year, and it built on the relationships it had developed in the region with a strong selection of artworks by reputed artists as well as masters. It proved a felicitous experience and consolidated the gains from its previous sales and was a success. As is its norm, the large DAG booth had a big number of Indian artists represented by their finest work. A. A. Almelkar Ambadas Anjolie Ela Menon Avinash Chandra Bikash Bhattacharjee Biren De Francis Newton Souza G. R. Santosh Ganesh Haloi George Keyt Gogi Saroj Pal Gopal Ghose H. A. Gade J. Sultan Ali Jeram Patel Jogen Chowdhury K. H. Ara K. K. Hebbar K. Laxma Goud Laxman Pai Madhvi Parekh Maqbool Fida Husain P. Khemraj P. T. Reddy Rabin Mondal Ram Kumar Sakti Burman Shanti Dave Shyamal Dutta Ray Sohan Qadri Somnath Hore Sunil Das Syed Hyder Raza

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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

Modernist sculptor Amar Nath Sehgal was one of the earliest Indian artists to take legal action under the Indian Copyright Act defending his moral right over his work. In 1957, Sehgal created a mural for Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi, on a government commission, which was pulled down without his permission or any intimation in 1979. Sehgal went to court and won the lawsuit. Learn More

Born in Purulia in West Bengal, Sunil Madhav Sen was a self-taught artist. Though he learned drawing as a child from a local teacher, he studied law and the liberal arts at Calcutta University and worked for the government. He pursued his passion for art privately alongside his legal practise, visiting the studios of Abanindranath Tagore, Atul Bose, J. P. Gangooly, and Satish Sinha. He also apprenticed for two years under Hemendranath Mazumdar, honing his skills in portrait painting. Learn More