Untitled

Anyone tracing a line to understand the most successful group of Indian modernists—the Progressives—will stop at a dot called Walter Langhammer. Fleeing the Nazis, the Austrian Jewish artist came to Bombay in the Thirties and soon became the nucleus around whom the young artists gathered, forming the PAG under his direction. Langhammer’s own art practice metamorphosed under Indian influences. This Untitled landscape is presumably Bombay at noon, capturing the sizzling sun and a boat bobbing in the Arabian Sea. The thatched-roof houses appear to be ancestors of the few remaining bungalows one can spot in the city’s former colonial quarters even today.