The Modern Indian Art

2.1 Core concepts

NCERT opens with the colonial inheritance. The British viewed fine art as European; the Art Schools they set up in Lahore, Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in the mid- to late nineteenth century promoted academic naturalism and Victorian tastes, and Indian crafts were reshaped by European market demand (NCERT §Intro, p. 99). The Bengal School of Art, nurtured by Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, emerged as the first nationalist response. India's first nationalist art school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 at Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan, conceptualised by Rabindranath Tagore. Kala Bhavana grew into the institutional heart of an entirely new pedagogy that placed Indian themes, folk technique and rural life at the centre of the curriculum.

Modern European art reached Indian artists via the Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta and through international art magazines. The Tagore family were familiar with Cubism and Expressionism, both of which had rejected academic realism (NCERT §Intro, pp. 99–100). Gaganendranath Tagore used Cubism — geometrical facets and prismatic colours, in the manner of Picasso — for paintings of mysterious halls and rooms with intersecting vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, of which A Cubist City (1925) is a celebrated example. Rabindranath Tagore turned to visual art comparatively late in his life; he developed a personal calligraphic style derived from crossed-out words and doodles in his manuscripts, with a palette limited to black, yellow ochre, reds and browns. Doodle (1920) is the textbook illustration of this practice (NCERT §Intro, p. 100).

Nandalal Bose joined Kala Bhavana in 1921–22; under his leadership the institution produced two pathbreaking modernist artists: Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, both of whom explored Santhal tribal life as a defining subject of Indian modernism. Benode Behari Mukherjee created the mural Lives of Medieval Saints (also called The Medieval Saints) on the walls of Hindi Bhavana at Shantiniketan in fresco buono (true wet fresco). The mural was painted in 1946–47 and covers about twenty-three metres of the upper half of three walls, charting the history of Bhakti through Tulsidas, Kabir, Surdas and Ramanuja. Mukherjee was one of the earliest artists in modern India to realise the potential of a mural to function as public art (NCERT §Intro, p. 101; Plate, p. 113).

Ramkinker Baij's Santhal Family (1937) is regarded by NCERT as the first public modernist sculpture in India. It is made of cement mixed with pebbles over a metal armature, and it is placed outdoors in the open at Kala Bhavana — a deliberate rejection of the gallery convention. D. P. Roy Choudhury's Triumph of Labour (a bronze installed at Marina Beach, Chennai, in 1959) used the language of academic realism to celebrate the heroic working classes; it is a useful counterpoint to Baij's modernist Santhal Family (NCERT §Intro, p. 101; Plates, pp. 122–123).

Jamini Roy, whose folk renaissance was introduced in the previous chapter, rejected academic art altogether, drew on Bengal's folk and rural traditions, used vegetable and mineral colours, and developed simple bold forms — a path that parallels Picasso's engagement with African art. Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), half-Hungarian and half-Indian, trained in Paris in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, then returned to India to assimilate Indian miniature and mural traditions with European modernism — producing one of the most original individual syntheses in the history of twentieth-century Indian art (NCERT §Intro, pp. 101–102).

The Calcutta Group was formed in 1943 under the sculptor Prodosh Das Gupta; its members included Nirode Mazumdar, Paritosh Sen, Gopal Ghose and Rathin Moitra. The group rejected the sentimentality of the Bengal School and its retrospective gaze. NCERT draws a comparison between Das Gupta and the South Indian sculptor P. V. Janakiram, whose Ganesh worked with sheets of metal (NCERT §Modern Ideologies, pp. 102–103). The 1943 Bengal Famine produced two great political print-makers: Chittoprasad and Somnath Hore. Both used etching, linocut and lithography for political art; Chittoprasad's Hungry Bengal (1943) sketches were commissioned by the Communist Party of India and document the village hunger of the famine years.

The Bombay Progressives' Group was formed in 1946; the outspoken leader was Francis Newton Souza, and the members were M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. A. Bakre, H. A. Gade and S. H. Raza (NCERT §Progressives, p. 103). Husain combined Western expressionist strokes with bright Indian colours, drawing from mythology, miniature painting, village crafts and folk toys; his Mother Teresa (1980s) shows the debt to Michelangelo's Pieta — a grown man lying horizontally on the lap of the maternal figure — translated into flat, collage-like Indian shapes. S. H. Raza moved progressively to abstraction, using the mandala, the yantra and especially the bindu (point) as symbol of oneness; V. S. Gaitonde also pursued pure abstraction. K. K. Hebbar, S. Chavda, Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta and Krishen Khanna oscillated between abstraction and the figurative (NCERT §Abstraction, p. 104).

The sculptor Piloo Pochkhanawala and the printmaker Krishna Reddy explored abstraction in three dimensions and in print respectively. K. C. S. Paniker founded the artist village Cholamandalam near Madras, becoming the pioneer of South Indian abstraction by incorporating Tamil and Sanskrit scripts and rural craft motifs into the abstract pictorial field (NCERT §Abstraction, pp. 104–105). Amarnath Sehgal balanced abstraction and figuration in wiry, attenuated bronze sculptures like Cries Un-heard (1958, NGMA collection; Mulk Raj Anand wrote on it). Mrinalini Mukherjee's Vanshri (1994, hemp / jute fibre) — translated as "Goddess of the Woods" — exemplifies abstraction in an unconventional natural medium (NCERT Plates, pp. 124, 126).

Neo-Tantric art emerged in the 1960s, developed by Biren De and G. R. Santosh in Delhi and by K. C. S. Paniker in Madras. The movement used geometrical yantra-like designs as meditative diagrams; G. R. Santosh visualised the cosmic union of purusha and prakriti through these symmetrical mandalic forms. Group 1890 was formed in 1963 under J. Swaminathan; it included Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jyoti Bhatt, Ambadas, Jeram Patel, Raghav Kaneria and Himmat Shah. Group 1890 emphasised rough texture and tactile surface, freedom from ideological commitment, and an indigenous modernist sensibility; though short-lived, it influenced Cholamandalam and the subsequent Baroda movement (NCERT §Tracing, p. 106).

Modernism reached India while the country was still a British colony, and so the swadeshi ethos (Ananda Coomaraswamy) and cultural nationalism shaped a selective rather than blind imitation of the West. NCERT highlights in a separate box that the subject matter of Indian modernism in the 1940s and 1950s was largely rural; the city and urban life rarely appeared as major subjects (NCERT §Tracing, p. 107).

The Baroda Art School, founded in the late 1950s, became the centre of New Figurative or Narrative art from the 1980s onwards. K. G. Subramanyan was a founding member: Shantiniketan-trained, he learnt sand casting from Rajasthani artists and made the great Kala Bhavana mural Three Mythological Goddesses (1988) in sand-cast relief. Gulam Mohammed Sheikh painted the old bazaar lanes of Baroda, invoking the medieval Italian artists of Sienna and the Lorenzetti brothers in City for Sale (1984, V&A, London). The 1981 exhibition Place for People — held in Delhi and Bombay and curated/written about by the critic Geeta Kapur — gathered six artists: Bhupen Khakhar, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Vivan Sundaram, Nalini Malani, Sudhir Patwardan and Jogen Chowdhury. This exhibition became the public manifesto of the Baroda narrative school (NCERT §New Figurative, pp. 107–109).

Bhupen Khakhar painted barbers, watch-repairers, queer experience — ordinary Indian middle-class life as the proper subject of high art (Janata Watch Repairing, 1972). Baroda painters celebrated popular art forms like truck and autorickshaw imagery. Mumbai painters borrowed from calendars, advertisements, film hoardings, even using photographic images on canvas; watercolour was painted to look like a photograph (NCERT §New Figurative, pp. 109–110).

New Media was the dominant trend from the 1990s. Liberalisation and globalisation brought video, photography and installation into the centre of practice; easel painting and conventional sculpture lost some of their importance. Nalini Malani (Mumbai) and Vivan Sundaram (Delhi) pioneered installation art. The photorealism technique was used by Atul Dodiya in Bapu (Rene Block Gallery, New York); T. V. Santosh and Shibu Natesan commented on communal violence and urban transformation; Sheba Chachi, Ravi Agarwal and Atul Bhalla used photography to document marginalised lives and environmental ecology (NCERT §New Media, pp. 110–111).

2.2 Definitions to memorise

2.3 Diagrams / processes to remember

Plates to recognise visually: A Cubist City (Gaganendranath Tagore, 1925, p. 99); Doodle (Rabindranath Tagore, 1920, p. 100); Black Horse (Jamini Roy, 1940, p. 101); Twins Bronze (Prodosh Das Gupta, 1973, p. 102); Hungry Bengal (Chittoprasad, 1943, p. 103); Farmer's Family (M. F. Husain, 1940, NGMA, p. 103); Ma (S. H. Raza, 1972, p. 104); Untitled (G. R. Santosh, 1970) and The Dog (K. C. S. Paniker, 1973, both Neo-Tantric, p. 105); Three Mythological Goddesses (K. G. Subramanyan, 1988, sand-cast relief Kala Bhavana mural, p. 109); City for Sale (G. M. Sheikh, 1984, V&A London, p. 108); Janata Watch Repairing (Bhupen Khakhar, 1972, p. 110); the deep visual studies — Mother Teresa (Husain, p. 114), Haldi Grinder (Sher-Gil, 1940, p. 115), Fairy Tales from Purvapalli (Subramanyan, 1986, p. 116), Whirlpool (Krishna Reddy, 1963, p. 117), Children (Somnath Hore, 1958, p. 118), Devi (Jyoti Bhatt, 1970, p. 119), Of Walls (Anupam Sud, 1982, p. 120), Rural South Indian Man-Woman (Laxma Goud, 2017, p. 121), Triumph of Labour (D. P. Roy Choudhury, 1959, p. 122), Santhal Family (Ramkinker Baij, 1937, p. 123), Cries Un-heard (Amarnath Sehgal, 1958, p. 124), Ganesha (P. V. Janakiram, 1970, p. 125), Vanshri (Mrinalini Mukherjee, 1994, p. 126).

Chronological backbone: 1919 Kala Bhavana → 1937 Santhal Family → 1943 Calcutta Group + Hungry Bengal → 1946 Bombay Progressives → 1946–47 Medieval Saints mural → 1958 Cries Un-heard + Children → 1959 Triumph of Labour → 1960s Neo-Tantric → 1963 Group 1890 + Whirlpool → 1972 Janata Watch Repairing + Ma → 1980s Mother Teresa → 1981 Place for People → 1984 City for Sale → 1988 Three Mythological Goddesses → 1994 Vanshri → 1990s onward New Media.

2.4 Common confusions / NTA trap points

• Santhal Family (Ramkinker Baij, 1937) vs Triumph of Labour (D. P. Roy Choudhury, 1959): Baij = cement+pebbles, modernist, Kala Bhavana; Roy Choudhury = academic realism, bronze, Marina Beach.
• Calcutta Group (1943, Prodosh Das Gupta) vs Bombay Progressives (1946, F. N. Souza) — different cities, leaders, years.
• Group 1890 (1963, J. Swaminathan) ≠ Cholamandalam (K. C. S. Paniker) ≠ Baroda Art School (late 1950s).
• Mother Teresa (Husain) draws on Michelangelo's Pieta — not on Indian sculpture.
• Whirlpool — Krishna Reddy, 1963, viscosity printing at Atelier 17 with S. W. Hayter, Met Museum, NY — NOT Somnath Hore.
• Neo-Tantric trio = Biren De, G. R. Santosh, K. C. S. Paniker (1960s) based on yantra; do not confuse with Group 1890.
• Bengal School = Abanindranath Tagore + E. B. Havell; Kala Bhavana = founded by Rabindranath (1919), led artistically by Nandalal Bose from 1921–22.
• Hungry Bengal = Chittoprasad's pamphlet sketches commissioned by CPI; Children (1958) = Somnath Hore's etching with aquatint inspired by the 1943 famine.
• Vanshri is HEMP/JUTE FIBRE (not bronze or marble).
• Place for People was 1981 — Delhi and Bombay — six artists; do not list five or seven.
• The Bombay Progressives' six members are Souza, Husain, Ara, Bakre, Gade, Raza.
• Photorealism in Bapu is by Atul Dodiya — not Atul Bhalla (who is a photographer).

2.5 Key artworks / artists