The inflexion points for Indian modern art have come from movements and collectives that have harnessed popular groundswell to provide new directions
The classical miniature tradition of art practice in Indian courts was disrupted by the arrival of British, Portuguese, Dutch and French traders and colonialists. They brought in waves of artists whose realistic portrayals in oil on canvas introduced glamour and scale to art that was unprecedented in the subcontinent. They set up schools to further cement this same practice in an attempt to replicate the art of crown countries.
After a brief stint, however, this imposed style of art-making began to be rejected in India as groups of artists started coming together in the 20th century to launch movements and collectives that were opposed to the propagation of art that was alien. But in the absence of a pan-Indian style, and given the growing dissent towards Western art, it was a matter of time before different representative arguments began to be mooted.
Beginning with the Bengal ‘School’ of revivalist art, a number of movements were set into motion in centres as far apart as Kolkata (then Calcutta), Chennai (then Madras), Mumbai (then Bombay), Baroda and New Delhi. Each helped in the emergence of varied tropes of art practice that have resulted in the diverse idea of modern art in the 20th century. While some were facilitated by ideologies, others were merely gathering points with little or no agenda. Each provided the stepping-stones for a vibrant culture of art practice that has remained in prevalence. While most collectives collapsed, the artists who were a part of these schools have been associated with an identity, whether relevant or not, that has benchmarked them, even as the groups vanished into oblivion.
This is not an exhaustive list of movements in the country. Some of the prominent schools include the Baroda ‘School’ led by NS Bendre with artists such as Bhupen Khakhar and Gulammohammed Sheikh on the rolls, and which, like its counterpart, the Bengal ‘School’, was an idea rather than a movement. There’s artist PT Reddy’s Bombay Contemporary Indian Artists popularly known as the Young Turks that was formed in 1941, six years ahead of the Progressives. These groups acted as catalysts for a particular idea at a time when modern art enjoyed poor currency.
Today, when a dialogue between artists has all but disappeared from popular discourse, they act as reminders of a time when these platforms were relevant for a sharing, or opposition, of ideas. That exchange may have become redundant, but the role they played cannot be undermined—not when uniqueness constitutes a badge that they still wear, whether as a medal of honour, or a marker of identity.
Bengal ‘School’
Early 19th century, Kolkata
Prominent artists: Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, MAR Chughtai, Mukul Dey, Surendranath Ganguly, Asit Kumar Haldar, Kshindranath Majumdar, Sanat Kar, Prosanto Roy, DP Roy Chowdhury
Santiniketan
1919-present, Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan
Artists: Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Rabindranath Tagore
Art historians refrain from referring to Santiniketan as a ‘movement’ even though it set off one of the most critical experiments in modernism, which formed a break from the past. Its trigger was Kala Bhavana, the art department of Visva-Bharati in Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore’s university that was founded on a kinship with nature. Tagore, never a proponent of the Bengal ‘School’, though it had been nurtured by his own family, called upon one of its most talented members, Nandalal Bose, to head his art department. It took Bose eight years to agree to the move, entailing his exit from cosmopolitan Kolkata to the isolation and wilderness of Santiniketan. This marked a major inflexion moment in Indian art practice. For the first time, distortion became a legitimate choice. Bose himself abdicated from his training to embrace an expressionistic language, most often seen in his ‘postcards’ made during his frequent travels. Among his students, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij stand out. Mukherjee is famous for his freely rendered drawings and collages that he made when he became blind, while Baij is India’s first modernist sculptor. He worked in cement and laterite to make monumental sculptures of everyday life. Tagore, who started painting in his late 60s, aided the movement with his often fantastical and occasionally macabre portraits and landscapes for which he is sometimes described as India’s first modernist. Though Kala Bhavana “was like a breath of fresh air” according to art historian R Siva Kumar, mentored exceptionally talented artists, and continues to be popular, the art practice of Santiniketan is associated only with these four artists.
Silpi Chakra
1949-late ’60s, New Delhi
Founders: BC Sanyal, Pran Nath Mago, Kanwal Krishna, KS Kulkarni, Dhanraj Bhagat Members: Satish Gujral, Ram Kumar, Dinkar Kowshik, Bishamber Khanna, Jaya Appasamy, Avinash Chandra
Art and cultural institutions began to emerge in the nation’s capital, of which the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) was the most prominent. But following Partition and Independence in 1947, a new group of artists who had been uprooted from Pakistan found themselves as refugees in New Delhi, among them BC Sanyal who had made a name for himself in Lahore. Sanyal led a breakaway faction to found Silpi Chakra based on the premise of a closer meeting ground between the arts, artists and writers. Even though it had no pronounced ideology, it believed that art had to be more easily accessible to people, for which it needed to come closer to them. The group brought exhibitions to Chandni Chowk and Karol Bagh, two of the most populated middleclass parts of the city with almost no interest in modern art. But there was no glue to hold the group together. The absence of a political or social agenda turned it into a cosy tea room for people to meet and gossip, but it failed to generate any new impulse or ideas, and gradually faded into extinction on account of its sterility.
Group 1890
1962, Bhavnagar
Artists: J Swaminathan, Jeram Patel, Ambadas, Jyoti Bhatt, Rajesh Mehra, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Raghav Kaneria, Reddappa Naidu, Eric Bowen, SG Nikam, Balkrishna Patel, Himmat Shah
(This story appears in the Sept-Oct 2015 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)