Epochal

‘Epochal: The Period of Pioneers’ reimagines post-independence Indian art in the decades immediately after independence. Spread across DAG, Mumbai, and Chatterjee & Lal, in a rare example of inter-gallery collaboration, the exhibition challenges the conventional focus on a few dominant artists’ groups, instead revealing a broad, dynamic network of practitioners engaged with both tradition and modernity.

These networks were driven by key forces, in particular the sites of existing and newly established art schools, as well as artist studios, which were found clustered in pockets around the country.

Through both artworks and archival material, the exhibition provides a re-telling of a period informed by its past and yet staking a firm claim to represent a young and independent India. Three overarching themes provide the framework for the exhibition: the nature and impact of the art scene inherited by artists of the immediate post-independence period; the increasing interest in social and political themes; and the transformation within the fine arts community to embrace an expanded definition of what constituted its remit, taking inspiration from design and craft traditions.

Within each of these themes, distinct tendencies are discernible around which artists tended to coalesce; they include portraiture, the landscape, several permutations of abstraction, and the depiction of religious imagery within a secular paradigm. In this way, “Epochal” highlights a flourishing ecosystem of experimentation. The exhibition invites audiences to rediscover how artists, nourished by both local and global currents, built on the past to create some of the most compelling art of the 20th century.