Domesticating Art Deco in mid-century India

Following the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris, 1925, Art Deco became established as a visually exuberant manifestation of modernism in design and architecture, with deep roots in the arts of painting, relief-work and mural-making.

A global phenomenon representing the aspirational dimensions of modernity, cinema—a young medium in its own right, which depended on the harmonious convergence of technological advancement, creative visual imagery and industrial production methods—soon came to play an important role in reinforcing the spread of the style and the connotations of its value due to the work of production designers such as Cedric Gibbons, who worked for the MGM Studios in Hollywood.

Gibbons knew about the Paris exhibition and utilised the emergent idiom of the Art Deco style to craft new spaces for emergent subjects and agents of this new symbol of modernity, especially women, in films like Our Dancing Daughters (1928) or, Our Modern Maidens (1929). MGM was responsible for making a big splash in Indian theatre design, allowing for Art Deco approaches to take over the design aesthetic of theatres they opened in India, especially in Bombay and Calcutta in the 1930s. While they pertained to architecture and decoration, marking its critique of both the colonial preference for the neoclassical and high modernism’s adoption of austere, experimental forms that eschewed ‘decorative’ work, the wide-ranging style also responded to debates in painting and mural-making, in the context of larger historical forces like colonialism and nationalism. Who were some of the figures participating in these debates or contributing towards their creative evolutions?

Detail of Mural at Umaid Bhawan, painted by Stefan Norblin. Image courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Significant figures were travellers across worlds, crossing over multiple styles and hybridising the global aesthetic of Art Deco so that indigenous forms found a way to coexist with international trends in design. Stefan Norblin, a Polish artist fleeing Europe during the Second World War, arrived in India in 1941 and left an indelible mark through his Art Deco-inspired murals in princely palaces, such as the Umaid Bhawan in Jodhpur or the Morvi Palace near Ahmedabad. Working until 1946, he created around sixty monumental frescoes and paintings, blending sleek Deco geometry in his elongated figures, with bold colours and streamlined forms, with narratives drawn from Hindu epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Commissioned by Maharajas seeking modern glamour amid colonial flux, Norblin's work epitomised what scholars like Amin Jaffer have characterised as ‘Indo-Deco,’ fusing European modernism with Indian iconography.

The style was further influenced by ongoing debates about Indian painting in the Government Art Schools of Calcutta and Bombay, where young artists and teachers attempted to find a compromise between their colonial pedagogies and nationalist reclamation of indigenous forms and narratives, led by diverse figures such as W. E. Gladstone Solomon, Principal of Bombay’s Sir J. J. School of Art and advocate of the School’s particular approach to developing an indigenous style, and Bengal School artists such as Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose (associated with the Government Art College, Calcutta and the Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan, respectively). These were publicly shown in exhibitions of painting or as murals, much like Norblin’s work.

Baburao Sadwelkar, Opposite to Metro Cinema, the Road Leading to Girgaum, the Red Tram Emerges through the Shadows & Buildings, 1951, Watercolour on paper, 14.0 x 20.7 in. Collection: DAG

Art Deco's influence on Indian theatres and domestic architecture emerged in the 1930s as a marker of modernity amid colonial transitions, blending global aesthetics with local aspirations. Swati Chattopadhyay critiques this as a ‘mode’ (consisting of particular features, distinguishable from ‘style’, which describes the larger language-family), embodying social shifts in urban elites' imaginaries, particularly in cities like Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras. Scholars highlight its persistence into the 1960s, driven by cinema's cultural pull and middle-class desires for streamlined domesticity.

Bijan Choudhary, Protest in front of the Ochterlony Monument / Shaheed Minar, c. 1960, Watercolour and charcoal on paper, 10.0 x 15.0 in. Collection: DAG

Before becoming domesticated, therefore, Art Deco first flourished in Indian cinema halls, symbolising technological glamour and mass entertainment. Bombay's Regal Theatre (1933), designed by Charles Stevens, pioneered the style with geometric facades and streamlined forms, while others like Eros featured Norblin’s murals and relief-work. Regal Cinema’s interior design featured sun-ray motifs designed by the Czech artist Karl Schara, a particular motif that would be repeated across buildings in Bombay and Calcutta (such as Society Cinema). In Calcutta, Roxy (originally Empire Theatre, 1908, Deco-renovated 1941) hosted operas and films, whereas the Metro Cinema (started in both Bombay and Calcutta by MGM) became a glamorous symbol of modernity in the city, becoming a destination for jazz music soirees and nightlife entertainment, along with cinematic spectacles. It cast its influence over fashion, architecture and cinema, with local writers observing the prevalence of a ‘Metro Pattern’ that wasn’t so much a coherent description of a fully articulated language of architecture as an aspirational tendency.

These theatres embodied Deco’s visual virtuosity, identifiable by their curved towers and bold motifs; yet Chattopadhyay argues they obscured deeper social relations, like evolving public intimacy and economic aspirations. Rural theatres persisted in the Deco style into the 1960s, associating the style with cinema's allure for diverse audiences. Although, in the post-independent period these spaces and forms would be subjected to decolonial appropriation, as some became sites of protest and alternative socio-political imaginaries, perhaps best exemplified in Bijan Choudhary's image of a protest in front of the formerly named Ochterlony Monument where one can still make out the Art Deco features of the Metro cinema in the background. It anticipates stories told by filmmakers like Mrinal Sen when they were shooting in the restive streets of late-1960s Calcutta, when protestors who were forcibly disappeared could be seen recorded in the filmmaker's scenes for the film Calcutta '71.

Deco infiltrated residences through firms like Ballardie, Thompson, and Matthews (B. T. M.), whom Chattopadhyay examines for imperial yet vernacular residential designs in Bombay, adapting to elite patrons' modernity impulses. In Calcutta's South Kolkata, ‘Metro-pattern’ houses mimicked cinema halls like Metro, eliminating courtyards for new, more indeterminate spaces for modern conjugality amid the rise of women professionals and servant-less homes. The easy crossings of these features can be seen in the fact that B. T. M. was also commissioned to design murals for the Deco-inspired theatre Globe, in Calcutta.

Detail from the proposed design for Globe Theatre murals by B. T. M. that were eventually not realised. Image courtesy: Private Collection

Chattopadhyay reinforces the cinematic link by highlighting how Calcutta residences expressing Deco features were represented in melodramas as negotiating the steady casting off of joint-family intimacies and articulating post-1947 masculinity crises, suggesting that the form became a touchstone for progressive ideas that made their way into the life of the emergent nation.