Chapter Notes

The Modern Indian Art

The Colonial Context and the Rise of Nationalism

During the British colonial period, the British generally viewed fine arts as a European domain. They believed that Indians did not have the necessary training or sensibility to create or appreciate fine arts.

In the mid-to-late nineteenth century, the British established art schools in major cities like Lahore, Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (now Mumbai), and Madras (now Chennai). These schools promoted two main styles:

• Traditional Indian crafts: However, they supported only those crafts that matched European tastes and were in demand in the European market.
• Academic and naturalist art: This style reflected the Victorian tastes popular in Britain at the time.

As a reaction against this colonial bias, a nationalist art movement emerged. The Bengal School of Art, led by Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was a leading example of this new movement.

In 1919, India's first nationalist art school, Kala Bhavana, was established in Shantiniketan. It was part of the Visva-Bharati University, a new university conceptualized by the poet Rabindranath Tagore. While Kala Bhavana carried forward the vision of the Bengal School, it also developed its own unique path to create art that was meaningful for Indians.

Early Modernists and New Influences

The period after World War I was a time of intense political change globally. Indian artists began to be influenced by modern European art movements, not just through exhibitions like the Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta, but also through art magazines.

Artists from the Tagore family, like Gaganendranath Tagore and Rabindranath Tagore, became familiar with international trends like Cubism and Expressionism. These movements rejected the idea that art must perfectly copy reality (academic realism). Instead, they experimented with abstraction, believing that art could create its own world using forms, lines, and patches of color.

Pioneers of Modern Indian Art

The Tagores

• Gaganendranath Tagore: He adapted the language of Cubism to create his own unique style. His paintings often depicted mysterious halls and rooms using a combination of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. This was different from the style of Pablo Picasso, the inventor of Cubism, who used geometric facets.
• Rabindranath Tagore: He began creating visual art late in his life. While writing poetry, he would often create patterns from doodles and crossed-out words, developing a unique, calligraphic style. These patterns evolved into human faces and landscapes. His color palette was limited, mainly using black, yellow ochre, reds, and browns. His work was a complete departure from the delicate and elegant style of the Bengal School.

Artists of Shantiniketan

• Nandalal Bose: He joined Kala Bhavana in 1921-1922. Though trained in nationalism in art under Abanindranath Tagore, he encouraged his students and colleagues to explore new forms of artistic expression.
• Benode Behari Mukherjee: A student of Nandalal Bose, he was interested in capturing the world around him. Instead of focusing on famous epics, he was drawn to the lives of medieval saints like Tulsi Das and Kabir. His famous mural, The Lives of Medieval Saints, in Shantiniketan, depicts the history of medieval India through their humane teachings.
• Ramkinker Baij: Another creative student of Bose, Baij's art was a celebration of nature and his everyday experiences. He often depicted the local Santhal tribe. His outdoor sculpture, Santhal Family, is considered the first public modernist sculpture in India. He used modern materials like cement mixed with pebbles, a stark contrast to the academic realism of earlier sculptors like D. P. Roy Choudhury.

Other Key Modernists

• Jamini Roy: Initially trained in the academic style, Roy rejected it after studying under Abanindranath Tagore. He saw a connection between the rural folk art of Bengal and the work of modern European artists like Picasso.
  • He used simple, pure colors, often making his own from vegetables and minerals, just like village artists.
  • His art could be easily reproduced by his family, similar to an artisan's practice.
  • However, unlike village artists, Roy signed his paintings, making his style uniquely personal.
• Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941): A unique female artist of half-Hungarian and half-Indian descent, she made immense contributions to modern Indian art in the 1930s.
  • She was trained in Paris and had direct experience with European modern art, including Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
  • After making India her home, she blended the miniature and mural traditions of Indian art with European modernism to create art with Indian themes.
  • Although she died young, her experimental work had a major impact on the next generation of Indian modernists.

Modern Ideologies and Political Art in India

After Amrita Sher-Gil's death, India was deeply affected by global events like World War II, which led to the devastating Bengal famine. This humanitarian crisis pushed many artists to think about their role in society.

The Calcutta Group

• In 1943, a group of young artists led by sculptor Prodosh Das Gupta formed the Calcutta Group.
• They believed art should be universal and free from the past. They disliked the Bengal School's style, finding it too sentimental.
• They wanted their art to speak of their own times, simplifying their work to emphasize elements like form, material, and color.

Political Art and Socialism

The widespread poverty and suffering drew many young artists in Calcutta towards socialism and Marxism. They wanted their art to address social problems.

• Chittoprasad and Somnath Hore were two prominent political artists who used printmaking (etchings, linocuts) as their medium.
• Printmaking allowed them to create multiple copies of their work, making it accessible to a larger audience.
• Chittoprasad was even asked by the Communist Party of India to travel through famine-stricken villages and make sketches, which were later published as a pamphlet titled Hungry Bengal.

The Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay

As India moved towards Independence, a desire for artistic freedom grew. In 1946, a new group formed in Bombay.

• The Progressives was led by the outspoken Francis Newton Souza and included artists like M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. A. Bakre, H. A. Gade, and S. H. Raza.
• F. N. Souza wanted to challenge the traditional ideas of beauty and morality taught in art schools. He often painted nudes with exaggerated proportions.
• M. F. Husain aimed to make modern art understandable in an Indian context. He combined Western expressionist brushstrokes with bright Indian colors and drew inspiration from Indian mythology, miniature paintings, and folk crafts. His style became representative of Indian modern art on the international stage.

Abstraction and the Search for an Indian Identity

While Husain focused on figurative art, other artists explored abstraction.

• S. H. Raza moved towards abstraction, with landscapes being a favorite theme. He connected his abstract art to Indian philosophy by using designs from old mandalas and yantras, and the bindu (dot) as a symbol of oneness.
• In South India, K. C. S. Paniker was a pioneer in abstraction. He founded Cholamandalam, an artist village near Madras. Paniker showed that abstraction had a long history in India by incorporating motifs from Tamil and Sanskrit scripts, floor decorations, and rural crafts into his work.

By the late 1970s, a tension grew between internationalism (using Western modern styles) and the indigenous (turning to native Indian arts). Artists like sculptor Amarnath Sehgal tried to find a balance, while others like Mrinalini Mukherjee used innovative indigenous materials like hemp fibre to create abstract sculptures.

Neo-Tantric Art

In the 1960s, a movement emerged to create a unique Indian abstract art, which became known as Neo-Tantric art.

• Artists like Biren De, G. R. Santosh, and K. C. S. Paniker turned to India's past and local traditions.
• They used geometric designs found in traditional diagrams for meditation (yantras).
• This style became popular in the West during the Hippie movement.
• G. R. Santosh created art representing the cosmic union of male and female energy (purusha and prakriti).

Artist Groups and Manifestos

As artists developed distinct styles, they began writing manifestos to declare their aims.

• In 1963, J. Swaminathan formed Group 1890.
• Their manifesto claimed to be free from any ideology. Instead, they focused on the material of painting, emphasizing rough textures and surfaces as a new artistic language.
• Though the group was short-lived, it influenced later artists.

The New Figurative Art (from the 1980s)

From the 1970s, following the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war and the birth of Bangladesh, many artists returned to using recognizable figures and stories to express social concerns.

The Baroda School

The Baroda Art School became a center for this new narrative art.

• Artists like K. G. Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, and Bhupen Khakhar began using storytelling in their paintings.
• They combined fact with fiction and drew inspiration from art history and popular art forms (like images on trucks and in small shops).
• Gulam Mohammed Sheikh painted the busy streets of Baroda while referencing the style of medieval Italian painters.
• K. G. Subramanyan, influenced by his teachers at Shantiniketan, was interested in public art like murals, which could be seen by everyone.
• Bhupen Khakhar painted everyday people like barbers and watch repairers, as well as the struggles of queer men against middle-class morality.

An important exhibition in 1981 called 'Place for People' showcased this narrative art and highlighted the growing role of art critics, like Geeta Kapur, in explaining artists' intentions to the public.

New Media Art (from the 1990s)

With the liberalization of the Indian economy and globalization in the 1990s, artists began exploring new ways to react to a rapidly changing world.

• Traditional media like painting and sculpture became less central.
• New media like video and photography gained popularity because they could be easily reproduced and shared.
• Installation Art emerged as a major contemporary art form. It combines different media—painting, sculpture, video, photography—in a single space to create an immersive experience for the viewer. Early installation artists included Nalini Malani from Mumbai and Vivan Sundaram from Delhi.
• Photorealism, a technique where artists paint in the style of a photograph, was used by artists like Atul Dodiya to comment on contemporary issues.
• Photography was also used to document social change and raise awareness about marginalized communities and environmental issues.

Today, contemporary art is constantly evolving, with artists using a wide range of media, including digital tools, to explore and understand the world.

Detailed Study of Key Artworks

Paintings and Prints

• The Lives of Medieval Saints (Benode Behari Mukherjee, 1946-47): A 23-meter long mural in Shantiniketan, created using the fresco buono technique. It depicts the lives of Bhakti poets like Kabir and Tulsidas, celebrating India's syncretic traditions. The figures are created with minimal lines, forming a rhythmic network that resembles a woven tapestry. It is an early example of modern public art in India.
• Mother Teresa (M. F. Husain, 1980s): This painting shows Husain's typical style of blending modern art with Indian themes. The faceless figure of Mother Teresa appears multiple times. The central image of her with a grown man on her lap references Michelangelo's famous sculpture, Pieta, showing Husain's familiarity with European art. The scene is depicted with flat, paper cut-out like shapes, using suggestion rather than realism.
• Haldi Grinder (Amrita Sher-Gil, 1940): This painting shows rural Indian women grinding turmeric. Sher-Gil used bright, saturated colors and flat shapes, drawing parallels between North Indian miniature traditions (like Basohli painting) and the modern art of Paul Gauguin. She creates shapes through color contrast rather than outlines and avoids creating depth, preferring a semi-abstract pattern.
• Children (Somnath Hore, 1958): A monochromatic etching that reflects the artist's haunting memories of the 1943 Bengal Famine. It shows five skeletal children with huge skulls and stick-like legs. The stark, linear style emphasizes their malnutrition and suffering. The figures are isolated, without any background, creating a powerful and direct emotional impact.
• Of Walls (Anupam Sud, 1982): An etching depicting a lonely woman seated on a pavement. The artist creates a brooding, sad expression by hollowing out the woman's face. The print explores social problems and the plight of marginalized people in an urban setting.
• Devi (Jyoti Bhatt, 1970): An etching that combines a linear drawing of a woman's face with folk motifs and patterns, re-contextualizing the traditional image of the goddess (Devi). The work balances tradition and modernity and reflects Tantric philosophy.
• Rural South Indian Man-Woman (Laxma Goud, 2017): An etching based on the artist's childhood memories of nature in rural India. The work combines ornate, detailed lines with a gentle stylization, giving the figures a puppet-like quality. It reflects his teacher K. G. Subramanyan's influence in using folk and popular traditions.

Sculptures

• Triumph of Labour (Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, 1959): A large-scale bronze sculpture at Marina Beach, Chennai. It shows four men struggling to move a rock, celebrating the contribution of human labor to nation-building. The sculpture's powerful, muscular figures and dramatic subject are characteristic of nineteenth-century romanticism. By placing laborers on a high pedestal, it replaces the traditional statues of kings or British dignitaries.
• Santhal Family (Ramkinker Baij, 1937): This monumental outdoor sculpture in Shantiniketan is considered India's first public modernist sculpture. It depicts a Santhal family migrating with their belongings. It is made from modern materials (cement, pebbles, metal armature) instead of traditional stone or marble. The sculpture is placed on a low pedestal, making it feel accessible and part of the viewer's space.
• Cries Un-heard (Amarnath Sahgal, 1958): A bronze sculpture that uses abstraction to depict a family—husband, wife, and child. The three stick-like figures are shown with their arms flung up, crying for help. The sculpture powerfully captures a sense of helplessness and pays homage to destitute families whose cries for help are ignored.
• Ganesha (P. V. Janakiram, 1970): A sculpture made of oxidised copper sheets. Influenced by South Indian temple sculptures, Janakiram creates a frontal, pictorial image of Ganesha playing a vina. He beats the metal sheets and then welds linear details onto the surface to define facial features and decorative motifs, blending folk and traditional craftsmanship.
• Vanshri (Mrinalini Mukherjee, 1994): Titled 'Goddess of the Woods', this sculpture is made from an unusual material: hemp-fibre. Mukherjee knotted and wove the jute fibre into a monumental, complex form. For years, her work was dismissed as craft, but it is now recognized for its originality and powerful imagination. The work has a face-like form with an inward expression, suggesting a natural divinity.