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Kshitindranath Majumdar, born on July 31, 1891, in Jagtai village of Murshidabad in West Bengal, is often referred to as a saint-artist who considered art as a form of devotion. Strongly influenced by Vaishnavism as propounded by the fifteenth century saint, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Majumdar trained in hymn singing, interpreted legends from Indian epics, and acted in productions of the theatre group owned by his father. Learn More

Devraj Dakoji was born in Dharmaji Gudem village in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh to a family of Ayurveda practitioners. Picking herbs for his father every morning before going to school proved to be a lasting influence in Dakoji’s life, making nature the leitmotif of his art. Learn More

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.

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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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Colonization is perhaps best understood as a process that unfolded over time than as a single historical event. In India and South Asia it began with the East India Company acquiring rights over land in different parts of the country, with the occasional political victories won on the battlefields. Since the Battle of Plassey (1757), their power over legislative and judicial matters grew steadily, backed by a strong military presence. Following the First War of Independence in 1857, the British Crown brought most parts of the Indian subcontinent under its direct rule, continuing to hold power until 1947.

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How did the multiple trajectories of visual arts develop in the subcontinent? Where did they originate and how did their paths converge? Drishyakala offers a sweeping journey into the heterogenous histories of visual arts in India, from the first European travelling artists who drew landscapes to popular prints of the earliest woodcuts and lithographs evolving into the thriving advertising visuals of the 20th century. The exhibition is broadly divided into four categories, each exploring an unique area of development—the art of portraiture through photography and painting, oriental sceneries drawn by European travelling artists, popular prints from the late eighteenth century to post-independence and artworks of the nine National Treasure Artists. Together, these sections give brief glimpses into the dizzying variety of forms, styles and languages of South Asian art.

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India Art Fair is South Asia’s largest platform for showcasing the best of modern and contemporary art from around the world, and DAG’s booth is the most looked forward to by connoisseurs of Indian art in India and overseas. They were not disappointed at this iteration of the fair where its lavish booth was set up to resemble public rooms in a large mansion with teak-panelled walls, pillars, portrait galleries, a private lounge, a media room for interviewing artists and important visitors that was streamed live, and special provisions for curated walks. It also published a daily art newspaper for the duration of the fair for distribution to all visitors. A large book accompanied the display at the booth. K. K. HEBBAR RABIN MONDAL HIMMAT SHAH SAILOZ MOOKHERJEA J. SULTAN ALI AMBADAS K. H. ARA RAMKINKAR BAIJ S. K. BAKRE PRABHAKAR BARWE DHANRAJ BHAGAT BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE NIKHIL BISWAS PESTONJI E BOMANJI NANDALAL BOSE AVINASH CHANDRA CHITTAPROSAD D. P. ROY CHOWDHURY SHANTI DAVE ADI DAVIERWALLA BIREN DE G. R. SANTOSH PARITOSH SEN HENRY SINGLETON M. F. HUSAIN FN SOUZA KALIGHAT J. SWAMINATHAN RABINDRANATH TAGORE L. N. TASKAR KRISHEN KHANNA RAMGOPAL VIJAIVARGIYA RAM KUMAR JEHANGIR SABAVALA HIMMAT SHAH EARLY BENGAL OIL H. A. GADE MOHAN SAMANT S H RAZA JAMINI ROY GEORGE KEYT B PRABHA PROKASH KARMAKAR K LAXMA GOUD RANBIR KALEKA P. KHEMRAJ DEVYANI KRISHNA VED NAYAR K C S PANIKER GIEVE PATEL PORTRAIT A. RAMACHANDRAN PROSANTO ROY V. VISWANADHAN RAM KUMAR RAVINDER REDDY

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S. H. Raza had begun to paint using oils, moving away from his impressionistic watercolours, on his way to winning the prestigious critics’ award in 1956. Just a year before, he completed a stunning painting of Parisian rooftops, revealing not a daylight scene but one of the night, only yellow lamplight from the streets dimly silhouetting the chimneys and sloping roofs. This period of Raza’s career is somewhat lesser known than his later, tantra-inspired works, as Ashok Vajpeyi and Aman Nath explain to us.

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'Iconic Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art, Edition 2' opened on 11 February, featuring fifty artworks which shaped the trajectory of pre-modern and modern art in the country. As part of the exhibition, Krishen Khanna speaks on the relationship between colors in his work and reflects on his painting ‘Woman with a Basket of Fruit’ which draws gestural elements, like the swinging posture, from South Asian bronzes. Learn More

‘Raza was in some ways an earth painter—someone to whom earth mattered both as a constant presence and an irrepressible memory.’ Ashok Vajpeyi looks at the natural mechanics of Sayed Haider Raza’s abstractions, tracing his relationship with landscape and art.

 

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At the turn of the twentieth century, Abanindranath Tagore asked himself if the emerging artists of modern India should continue to paint in the manner of their European colonizers; or was there a new path waiting to be forged? His answers led him to envision a pan-Asian cultural identity, spanning traditions from Persia to Japan, and culminating in a ‘new “Indian” art.’ Regarded as the founder of the Bengal School, Abanindranath left an unparalleled legacy both in terms of his own diverse body of work, and through his pupils, like Nandalal Bose, who shaped the contours of art across the subcontinent in the twentieth century.

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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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