Take a look at some of the globally acclaimed Indian painters and know more about their journey.*
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#M F Husain
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1915, Pandharpur, Maharashtra, India
Died 2011, London
Lived and worked between India, Dubai and London
Universally acclaimed as one of India's modern masters, Maqbool Fida Husain is unparalleled in his breadth of artistic vision and sophisticated re-contextualization of European Modernism. Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Husain came to Bombay in 1937 determined to become a painter, where he slept on the footpath and painted under the streetlights. A self-taught artist, he began his career painting cinema posters and hoardings, and, in 1941, making toys and furniture designs. As a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, launched in 1947, he heralded a new freedom for Indian art in the post-Independence decades. Husain’s name has become almost synonymous with modern Indian art, for no single artist has popularised Indian art, within the country or internationally, as Husain has done. His endless quest for his cultural roots and a fearlessly open-minded willingness to absorb diverse influences has made M F Husain one of the most recognisable figures of modern Indian art.
Within Husain, there existed two painters—one pure and another popular. He was indeed a people’s painter. He felt that painting should be for everybody. Husain’s personal temperament has, of course determined his style.Husain’s figures are full with energy. Even if the figures are not in motion, the curvilinear forms, the rhythmic lines, the way the paint is used, show a sense of urgency. The broken and bold lines, a unique way of application of the paint show his restlessness and desire for speed. And this is beauty of his artworks.
Women have been a dominant and recurring theme in Husain’s works since the early years. One of the reasons for this could be the loss of his own mother at an extremely early age. Irrespective of the subject of the painting, whether she is shown as a mother or a dancer or a child, she is always shown in a position of strength.
Horses also fascinated Husain since the 1950s. He studied ancient terracotta horses during his first visit to China in 1952 and Renaissance horses during his trips to Europe, and the early nudes are often inspired by classical Indian sculpture. For Husain, the horse seems to stand for super-human forces, powerful not only for its stampeding arrogance, but because of its greater sophistication.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Husain also made feature films, such as Through the Eyes of a Painter, in 1967, which was a Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin Film Festival, and Gajagamini in 2000. In 1971, his work showed alongside Picasso’s at the Sao Paulo Biennial.
The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan awards, both prestigious civilian awards. Husain passed away in London in 2011.
“I only give expression to the instincts from my soul” - M. F. Husain
#F N Souza
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Saligaon, Goa, India
Died 2002, Bombay
Lived and worked in Bombay, London and New York
Francis Newton Souza the founder of the Progressive Artist's Group in 1947 is best known for his inventive human forms particularly the heads. Souza, who was born and brought up in a catholic family in Goa, opposed church and its hypocrisy and authoritarian structure. He left for London in 1949 where he had several shows and his career was on a rise. Among the many influences on the artist, the art movement of the early 20th century in Europe, Cubism, with its proponents Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the forefront contributed to shaping much of Souza's works. He combined fierce lines with cruel humour. Nudes, landscapes and portraits - he painted in every style and in every medium, even inventing ‘chemical alterations’, a method of drawing with the use of chemical solvent on a printed page without destroying the glossy surface. This helped the artist to experiment with the layering of multiple imagery, thus creating several simultaneous narratives.
Backed by the patronage of Eugene Schuster, of the London Arts Group gallery, in Detroit, Souza migrated to New York in 1967, where he received the Guggenheim International Award. Success waxed and waned in the years that followed, though his reputation was ultimately cemented. Throughout his life, his work appeared in the world’s major art spaces, including the Halles de L’lle in Geneva, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., Bose Pacia in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and many others in Paris, London, Dubai and New Delhi.
One of the most expensive artworks Birth, 1955, sold for a whopping $2.5 million at a Christie’s auction in 2008, setting quite a record of its own.
“Francis Souza was my mentor. I came into the art world because of him. He is the most significant Indian painter.” - M.F. Husain, artist
#Raza
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1922, Babariya, Madhya Pradesh, India
Lived and worked in New Delhi
Died in 2016
A founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group in 1948, Syed Haider Raza was a pioneer for the cause of Modern Indian Art. The unique energy vibrating with colour in his early landscapes became more subtle later on but equally if not more, dynamic. Although the paintings are non-representational, the combination of bright scorching colours and powerful brushstrokes succeed in invoking the vibrancy and spirit of both the Indian language and its people.
In the Sixties, Raza drifted away from realistic landscapes towards ‘gestural expressionism’, a form of abstraction that was inspired by the works of American artist Rothko. Ultimately, the themes and forms for Raza’s paintings evolved from his childhood memories and impressions – life in the densest forests of Madhya Pradesh, close to the river Narmada and in proximity of nature, the bright colours of the Indian market, and a black dot to meditate on drawn by a schoolteacher for the six-year-old Raza. Those visions and forms he carried in his memory were animated on the canvas through the use of geometrical lines and intense patches, bursts of colour. The black dot became a starting point that transmitted into a series of Raza’s paintings known as Bindu – a symbol of divine and artistic creativity, the essence of any form and movement.
In addition to numerous solo shows in galleries around the world, his work has been included in international exhibitions in cities like New York, Washington D.C., and Oxford, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, and in the Biennales of Venice, Sao Paulo and Menton (France). He won numerous international honors along the way, including the Prix de la Critique (1956), and the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian honors awarded by the Indian Government (1981). In 1983, he was elected Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi.
“Raza has always been a pilgrim of intensity.” - Ranjit Hoskote, poet, critic, cultural theorist
#Akbar Padamsee
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1928, Mumbai
Died in 2019
Although never formally a part of the Bombay Progressives, Akbar Padamsee was influential in shaping the group’s ideology and carrying it to the pinnacles of excellence. It was at J.J. School of Art that he met Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Gaitonde and Souza, the members of the Progressive Artists Group . Using a variety of mediums like oil paintings, watercolours, sculpture, photography and printmaking, Padamsee’s work explores genres like nudes, heads and metascapes, mirroring much of post- independence India’s struggle with body, figure and abstraction. Although known as a painter, Padamsee has experimented with a variety of mediums like filmmaking, photography, computer graphics and printmaking. Initially using nude photography to assist in his drawing, it was at a much later stage that he discovered photography as a tool of study in the properties of light.
Kalidas’s Abhigyanam Shakuntalam introduced the artist to two controllers of time—the sun and the moon. This idea swayed him so much that around 1970s he decided to translate the verse pictorially across the canvas as metascapes or metaphorical landscapes. He has a deep and abiding interest in Sanskrit texts, a glimpse of which finds resonance in his statement on sun-moon metascapes of the mid seventies. In an interview Padamsee says “in the introductory stanzas of Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam he describes the sun and the moon as the controllers on time – ‘ye dve kal vighattah’, and water as a source of all seeds – “sarva beej prakriti”. I would never have thought of painting the sun and the moon together if it were not for this. I felt I could use the elements – water, earth, sky – without referring to any particular landscape – a metaphysical landscape”.
He had several solo exhibitions in India culminating in retrospectives in Mumbai and New Delhi. He has participated in important group exhibitions at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, in Paris; the National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi; the Museum of Modern Art, in Oxford, UK; and at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. His work has also exhibited at the Biennales of São Paulo, Tokyo and Venice. He lives and works in Mumbai.
“"The conscious mind is like a monkey bitten by a scorpion. It is never still. As a result most of our unconscious feelings escape us. An artist needs to be in silence.” - Akbar Padamsee
#V S Gaitonde
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Nagpur, India
Died 2001, New Delhi, India
Lived and worked in New Delhi
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde is one of India's most profound and evocative artists, who has established his eminent presence and impressed his sublime vision into the canons of contemporary Indian art. In 1947, along with other artist friends, he founded the 'Progressive Artist Group', with a broad awareness to break away from the past, from a manner oppressively weighed down by colonial academism and clichéd Indianness to pave the way for an international idiom. Gaitonde played a vital role in establishing the foundations of abstraction in India. It can be said that he was an artist who was indeed ahead of time who ventured into the mode of abstraction.
The break down of representation seen in his use of symbols, calligraphic elements and hieroglyphs served as a bridge into Gaitonde’s later fully abstracted paintings, as his concurrent study of Zen Buddhism began to influence his though process and his art. Influenced by Zen philosophy and ancient calligraphy, his works have an inherent structure and control on the midst of their stream of consciousness composition. The mysterious and personalized hieroglyphs of Gaitonde are the manifestations of intuitions invested in the eternal and meaningful silence, seeking to open up the space. In Gaitonde’s works a spiritual sublimation was created and the translucent planes created an underwater ambience. The reclusive master experimented with form and shape in his works evoking subliminal depths in his works.
Deriving his inspiration from Post-War artists like Paul Klee,Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miro which he encountered during his few months travelling in the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Gaitonde began his series of experimentation with form and light renouncing the representation of recognisable form on canvas. He is known for his monochromes depicting his mastery over light and depth and was a firm believer in non-conformism. His works express his self-reflective and reclusive nature
In 2013, one of Gaitonde's untitled painting sold for ₹237 million (US$3.5 million), set a record for an Indian artist at Christie's debut auction in India.
While he lived, his work appeared in solo shows in New Delhi, Mumbai and New York; posthumously, his work has appeared in dozens of group shows around the world, and, in November, 2014 a solo retrospective was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which travelled to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Venice in 2015.
““Everything starts from silence. The silence of the brush. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife.”- V S Gaitonde
#Ram Kumar
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Shimla, India
Died in 2018
Following the romantic notions of the artist as a figure of solitude, Ram Kumar manages to lead a reclusive life where his art becomes the core of his interactions. This silence in the public realm is transferred in his abstract paintings, creating images of calm serenity on the surface. However these images of quietness are reflective of boundaries based on class restrictions and inner struggle in an industrialised urban setting. He portrayed unemployed youth, lonely women, figures which lacked emotions, revealing through the contours of the body, pale stark faces with penetrable gaze. Their faces and expressions reflect their coldness
Ram Kumar initially started painting figurations, and later moved on to abstraction. From the 1940s he started associating himself with SH Raza and learned from Fernand Leger in Paris, and became increasingly interested in European post-war art from where the dark and fatalistic preoccupations were most probably derived. Cities have always been sources of inspiration for his paintings, among which the city Benaras (now Varanasi) occupies a special place in his artistic output. The city’s architectural beauty and unusual perspectives provide him with the visual vocabulary .The idea of celebration and mourning that exemplifies life in the city speak of a hope amidst fading away. This lived duality becomes a working metaphor for Ram Kumar to speak about the state of mind of human life.
In his lifetime, Kumar’s work has been in more 35 solo exhibitions in India, with retrospectives in Bombay, New Delhi and Kolkata. He has also participated in group shows in Geneva, Paris, and others and at the biennales of São Paulo, Tokyo and Venice, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Arts Council of Great Britain. In 1993, a large retrospective of his work was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. He was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the Indian Government in 1979, one of India’s highest civilian awards.
“When one is young and beginning, one's work is dominated by content, by ideas, but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself. I have grown detached. I want to find the same peace that the mystics found.” - Ram Kumar
#Tyeb Mehta
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1925, Kapadvanj, Gujarat, India
Died 2009, Mumbai
Lived and worked in Mumbai and London
Not every day a man with as exceptional artistic calibre as Tyeb Mehta is born. A supremely talented Indian painter, Tyeb Mehta’s paintings epitomized the modern language of Indian art. He is revered to as a cultural hero who through his paintings brought out the evils of the contemporary society, most dominantly their suffering, anguish and dilemma. Born at a time when the country was experiencing nationalism at its peak, events and experiences from his personal life shaped much of his artistic career. The spirit of nationalism and the distress that came with partition were strongly portrayed on his canvas. He was later inspired by Francis Bacon’s expressionist paintings and minimalist art of New York. What made Tyeb Mehta the most noted artist of India was the fact the he was the first Indian contemporary artist whose works were sold for over a million dollars. Furthermore, he also led to what eventually became the great Indian art boom in the country.
Tyeb Mehta’s simplicity is furthered to add another form of segregated quality to it with his Diagonal series. These paintings are qualified with a diagonal running across the canvas, breaking the visual fluency into two while maintaining the other segregations with different block colours. This forms a visual marker to situate polarities of ideas and actions within the same canvas. Retaining an inimitable Tyeb Mehta used a few images, which have been worked at in different situation. The most significant ones are the trussed bull, Kali the falling figure, the diagonal cutting across these works. Mehta was influenced by French Modernism. The anguish displayed in his work reflected his own experiences from the struggle within oneself and the dreadful memory of a man whose death Mehta had seen during the India-Pakistan partition. It also displayed the horror of the partition followed by the state of turmoil in the sub-continent which still continues.
In his lifetime he was awarded the Prix Nationale in Cagne-sur-Mer, in 1974, and received the Kalidas Samman from the Madhya Pradesh State Government in 1988.He was also awarded Gold Medal by the President of India on the occasion of Lalit Kala Akademie golden Jubilee Celebration in 2004. He also received Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India in 2007. He passed in 2009.
“His painterly frame occasionally assumes the magnitude of the monumental, where image, tone and space coalesce towards an ascending truth.” - Yahodhara Dalmia, curator
#Jehangir Sabavala
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1922, Mumbai, India
Died 2011, Mumbai, India
Lived and worked in Mumbai
Born into an affluent Parsi family in Bombay in 1922, he studied in the best-known art institutions in the world. He began with the J.J. School of Art and received his diploma in 1944. He then traveled abroad and studied at the Heatherly School of Art in London from 1945 to 1947. All these resulted in an understated charm, elegance, erudition which made him stand out in a sea of also-rans.
Jehangir Sabavala's modernist style of painting is deeply engrained with classical influence. His art is a mixture of academic, impressionist, and cubist textures, forms and colours. He preferred to work most often in oils, creating landscapes that had/ have remarkable depth and sentiment. Covered in middle tones and veiled light, his paintings evoke a feeling of solitude, tranquility and contemplation.
Arun Khopkar's film on Sabavala's life and art, Colours of Absence, won the National Award in 1994.In 2010, another film about his life was made, The Inheritance of Light: Jehangir Sabavala.
In 2010, one of his serene landscapes called Casuarina Line fetched Rs 17 million at a Saffronart auction. One of his paintings titled Vespers 1, was sold for £253,650 (Rs. 21 million) at a Bonhams sale in London. Three monographs have been published on this artist already, by eminent art publishers including the house of Tata- McGraw-Hill and the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. ‘Colours of Absence’, a film on his life, won the National Award in 1994. Sabavala was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ by the Government of India in 1977, and the Lalit Kala Ratna by the President of India in 2007. Jehangir Sabavala passed away in 2011.
“My art, a mixture of academic, impressionist and cubist texture, form and colour, acquired a distinct style in the mid ’60s. And with each step I have evolved a new experience. But if I look back, I find I have carried all the elements forward." - Sabavala
#Jamini Roy
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1887, Bankura, West Bengal, India
Died 1972, Kolkata
Lived and worked in Kolkata
Born in 1887 in a small village in Beliatore, Bankura district, West Bengal, Jamini Roy joined the Government School of Art, Kolkata in 1903. He was one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, whose artistic originality and contribution to the emergence of modern art in India remains unquestionable.
He began his career by painting in the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits, very much in keeping with his training in a British academic system. Yet, by 1925, Roy had begun experimenting along the lines of popular bazaar paintings sold outside the Kalighat temple in Kolkata. By the early 1930s, Roy made a complete switch to indigenous materials to paint on woven mats, cloth and wood coated with lime. The inspiration for painting on woven mats was the textures he found in Byzantine art, which he had seen in colour photographs. It occurred to him that painting on a woven mat might make for an interesting mosaic-like surface.
Roy held several one-man exhibitions and numerous group shows. His works can be found in several private and public collections, institutions and museums all over the world, including the Lalit Kala Academy in Delhi and museums in Germany and the United States of America.
He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1955. Jamini Roy died on 24 April 1972 in Kolkata, where he had lived all his life.
“Roy’s admiration for rural folk art was politically motivated. It was part of a nationalistic desire to find an artistic style free from colonialism. His works of men and women explore the economy of line, the beauty of gesture and the compositional clarity of the frontal perspective,” Ms. Nair added.” - critic-scholar Uma Nair
#B Prabha
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1933, Bela, India
Died 2001, Nagpur, India
Lived and worked in Mumbai
Born in Bela, a small town near Nagpur, B Prabha, a foremost contemporary Indian painter had an instantly recognizable style of painting. Her paintings covered a wide range of themes which included landscapes, still lifes and human figures. Social issues like hunger and homelessness were also depicted in her paintings. She is popular for graceful elongated figures of pensive tribal women in her paintings, with each canvas in a single dominant color. Even her landscapes and still life paintings (like flower vases) have an Indian touch to them.
Prabha observed both urban and rural women in great detail. She not only painted their lives but also their sentiments. She found different women belonging to different strata of the society to be suffering differently and bearing the weight without a murmur.
Prabha once said that her aim was to “paint the trauma and tragedy of women,” this stance is commendable at a time when Indian women were rather oppressed. Her career graph, encompassing her journey from a humble village to the hustle-bustle of a city was quite interesting. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad. By the time of her death, her work had been shown in over 50 exhibitions. She passed away in 2001. In 2008, her paintings were included in shows like ‘Winter Moderns’ at Aicon Gallery, New York; and ‘Pot Pourri’ at Gallery Beyond, Mumbai.
“I want to paint the trauma and tragedy of women” - B Prabha
#Anjolie Ela Menon
Indian Modern Artist
Born in 1940
Lives and works in Delhi
Anjolie Ela Menon (born 1940) is one of India's leading artists. Her paintings are in several major collections. Most recently (2006), a major work "Yatra" was acquired by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, California. Her preferred medium is oil on masonite, though she has also worked in other media, including glass and water colour. She is a well known muralist. She was awarded the Padma Shree in 2000.
Anjolie Ela Menon's preferred medium was oil on masonite, which she applied by using a series of translucent colours and thin washes. In addition to oil paintings and murals, she worked in several other mediums, including computer graphics and Murano glass. She is best known for her religious-themed works, portraits, and nudes that incorporated a vibrant colour palette and were rendered in a variety of styles ranging from cubism to techniques that recalled the artists of the European Renaissance. In 1997 she, for the first time displayed non-figurative work, including Buddhist abstracts. She represented India at the Paris, Algiers, and São Paulo Biennales and at three Triennales in New Delhi
“Dissatisfaction is the source of growth, I encourage artists to abandon known (and often acclaimed) & ground for new territory”.” - Anjolie Ela Menon
#Krishen Khanna
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1925, Faislabad, Pakistan
Lives and works in New Delhi
Born in 1925 in what is now Faislabad in Pakistan, Krishen Khanna grew up in Lahore, only studying art after he graduated from college at evening classes held at the Mayo School of Art there. In 1947, Khanna’s family moved to Shimla as a result of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and Khanna was deeply affected by not only the change in his personal life, but also the socio-political chaos that reigned around him. His early works are reproductions of the scenes that were indelibly imprinted in his memory during this period.
Most of Khanna’s work is figurative; he chose to not explore the abstraction that most of his contemporaries were delving into. In an interview with Saffronart he said “I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms. I thought that the person or the individual is being neglected – the person in a particular situation who is influenced by the conditions around. I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition.”
In 1964, Khanna was artist-in-residence at the American University, Washington D.C. In 1965, he won a fellowship from the Council for Economic and Cultural Affairs, New York following the travel grant they had awarded him three years earlier. Recognising his immense contribution to Indian Art, the Government of India has bestowed several honours upon him including the Lalit Kala Ratna from the President of India in 2004 and the Padma Shri in 1990.
"Krishen Khanna has tended to engage with his subjects as if in an extended and somewhat unstructured conversatoin between old friend. Effectively, the paintings constitute a powerful psychological engagement, on that also serves as a document of the passage of time in modern India.” Gayatri Sinha, critic, curator
#Amrita Sher-Gil
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1913, Budapest, Hungary
Died 1941, Lahore, British India (present day Pakistan)
Lived and worked in Paris, France and later in Amritsar and Shimla in India and Lahore, now in Pakistan
She was a pioneer in the history of modern Indian art, and in the 28 years of her brief life was a revolution personified. Born in Budapest in 1913 to a Hungarian mother and Indian father, Sher-Gil was a tour de force in the landscape of Modernism in British India
Having received her training at Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, the Indian Hungarian artist set off for India in 1934, declaring "Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque and many others. India belongs only to me”. Amrita Sher-Gil painted the inner world of women like few other Indian painters had, depicting them in countless moods and forms .
Having mastered the western oil painting technique, her depiction of rural life and people took a warmer, earthier tone. Sher-Gil had a special fascination for the colour red that is evident as it stands out against the dark tones of her background or is often contrasted with green and white. An exceptional use of white always marks Amrita's paintings . In Village Scene, 1938, the white of the women's clothes glimmer against their dark bodies and the white walls in the backdrop. She was all know for Self-portraits.
"Amrita Sher-Gil did not have world enough, nor time enough, to realise in full her rare aesthetic vision.” - Raul de Loyola Furtado, art historian
#Raja Ravi Varma
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1848, Travancore, Kerala, India
Died 1906, Trivandrum, Kerala, India
Raja Ravi Varma, also known as 'The Father of Modern Indian Art' was an Indian painter of the 18th century who attained fame and recognition for portraying scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. He was born on April 29, 1848 in Kilimanoor, Travancore and demised on October 2, 1906 in Attingal, Travancore at the age of 58.
He received first painting lessons from his uncle Raja Varma. He also learnt oil painting from European Painter, Theodre Jensen, and Alagiri Naidu, a court Painter of Swati Tiruna, Maharaja of Travancore.
He in his creative endeavours attempted to blend Indian mythology, natural aesthetics and European realism. He left us what has now come to be associated with academic realism . His oil paintings and oleograph reproductions reached out every Indian possible in his and in later times. Raja Ravi Varma, a self-taught artist, furthered his creative talent by listening to classical music, watching Kathakali dances, oral narrations of epic stories, reading ancient manuscripts preserved by his family. His first commissioned works was a painting of family group in which he painted ten-twelve family members.
His works are mostly in three forms: portraits, portrait based compositions and theatrical compositions based on myths and legends . Between 1870 and 1878, he painted portraits for Indian aristocracy and British officials, maintaining perfect gesture, depicting sensitivity and subtlety. His portraits and compositions exude elegance, fragrance of the subject. His genius lay in exactly imitating their attire and demeanour for which he became renowned. He depicted, curvy, elegant, and serene, women draped in traditional attire, subtle complexion, intriguing gesture and eyes, captivating enough to hold viewer’s eyes.
“There Is No Failure. It's Only Un-Finished Success.”- Raja Ravi Varma
#Badri Narayan
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1929, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Died in 2013
Born in July 1929, in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, the self-taught artist Badri Narayan has been painting for over 45 years. During this time, he has worked as an art teacher and an artist, but has always remained a deeply introspective individual. This self-reflection and autobiographical perspective is the most constant theme in Narayan's work.
The artist’s paintings are narrative, and titles like ‘Queen Khemsa's Dream of Hamsa’ and ‘Meeting at Midstream’, are the starting points from where one must unravel the complexities presented by the paintings, in order to interpret and understand them. Symbolism is a recurring feature of his works, though sometimes, he also uses popular icons of Indian culture like Ganesha. He explains, "I have picked up the imagery that surrounds me, the one I am born into, and it comes naturally." Narayan draws heavily from Indian mythology and metaphors and acknowledges the influence of the Indian miniature tradition in his works. The artist believes in the two-dimensionality of painting, and prefers to work in a smaller format; one that he finds practical and well suited for the watercolours that have been his preferred medium for several years. Narayan has also worked with etchings, woodcuts and ceramics and illustrated some children’s books.
Narayan’s first solo exhibition of paintings was held at the Hyderabad Art Society in 1954. Since then, he has held well over fifty solo shows including several exhibitions at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai. He has also exhibited his work at Mon Art Gallerie, Kolkata; Sakshi Art Gallery, Bangalore; and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
Badri Narayan’s work has also been featured in several group shows, the most recent ones being 'The Root of Everything' at Gallery Mementos, Bangalore, in 2009; ‘Different Strokes’ presented by Tulika Arts at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2007-08; ‘Journey 2’ at Gallery Art and Soul, Mumbai, in 2007; and ‘Spectra’ at Gallerie Zen, Bangalore, in 2007. He has also participated in the Bharat Bhavan Biennale, Bhopal, in 1992; the 7th Indian Triennale, New Delhi, in 1991’ the 1st and 2nd International Triennales, New Delhi, in 1968 and 1971 respectively; the 5th International Biennale of Prints, Tokyo, in 1966-67; and the 2nd International Biennale, Paris, in 1961.
Please note: There are many Indian artists which have recognised globally. The above list mentions the few of well-known Indian painters.
Important Message*:
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Image Attributions:
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Image used for Artist
Attribution/Source
M F Husain Image 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._Husain
S H Raza Image 1
By Pantalaskas [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASayed_Haider_Raza_(1995).png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Sayed_Haider_Raza_%281995%29.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Raza
Image 2
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARaza_painting.JPG
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Raza_painting.JPG
By Sayed Haider Raza (painting) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Raza
FN Souza Image 1
By Fredericknoronha (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_artist_of_Goan_origin,_Francis_Newton_Souza.jpg
Tyeb Mehta Image 1
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATyeb_Mehta.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Tyeb_Mehta.jpg
By Cea - www.flickr.com, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18303187
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyeb_Mehta
Anjolie Ela Menon Image 1
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShOObh-_Ashok_Pandey_%26_Anjolie_Ela_Menon.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/ShOObh-_Ashok_Pandey_%26_Anjolie_Ela_Menon.jpg
By Shoobhgroup - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46812207
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjolie_Ela_Menon
The word content sources are listed below:
-https://fineartsenthusiast.wordpress.com/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/
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#M F Husain
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1915, Pandharpur, Maharashtra, India
Died 2011, London
Lived and worked between India, Dubai and London
Universally acclaimed as one of India's modern masters, Maqbool Fida Husain is unparalleled in his breadth of artistic vision and sophisticated re-contextualization of European Modernism. Born in Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Husain came to Bombay in 1937 determined to become a painter, where he slept on the footpath and painted under the streetlights. A self-taught artist, he began his career painting cinema posters and hoardings, and, in 1941, making toys and furniture designs. As a member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, launched in 1947, he heralded a new freedom for Indian art in the post-Independence decades. Husain’s name has become almost synonymous with modern Indian art, for no single artist has popularised Indian art, within the country or internationally, as Husain has done. His endless quest for his cultural roots and a fearlessly open-minded willingness to absorb diverse influences has made M F Husain one of the most recognisable figures of modern Indian art.
Within Husain, there existed two painters—one pure and another popular. He was indeed a people’s painter. He felt that painting should be for everybody. Husain’s personal temperament has, of course determined his style.Husain’s figures are full with energy. Even if the figures are not in motion, the curvilinear forms, the rhythmic lines, the way the paint is used, show a sense of urgency. The broken and bold lines, a unique way of application of the paint show his restlessness and desire for speed. And this is beauty of his artworks.
Women have been a dominant and recurring theme in Husain’s works since the early years. One of the reasons for this could be the loss of his own mother at an extremely early age. Irrespective of the subject of the painting, whether she is shown as a mother or a dancer or a child, she is always shown in a position of strength.
Horses also fascinated Husain since the 1950s. He studied ancient terracotta horses during his first visit to China in 1952 and Renaissance horses during his trips to Europe, and the early nudes are often inspired by classical Indian sculpture. For Husain, the horse seems to stand for super-human forces, powerful not only for its stampeding arrogance, but because of its greater sophistication.
In a career that spanned seven decades, Husain also made feature films, such as Through the Eyes of a Painter, in 1967, which was a Golden Bear Award winner at the Berlin Film Festival, and Gajagamini in 2000. In 1971, his work showed alongside Picasso’s at the Sao Paulo Biennial.
The Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan and the Padma Vibhushan awards, both prestigious civilian awards. Husain passed away in London in 2011.
“I only give expression to the instincts from my soul” - M. F. Husain
#F N Souza
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Saligaon, Goa, India
Died 2002, Bombay
Lived and worked in Bombay, London and New York
Francis Newton Souza the founder of the Progressive Artist's Group in 1947 is best known for his inventive human forms particularly the heads. Souza, who was born and brought up in a catholic family in Goa, opposed church and its hypocrisy and authoritarian structure. He left for London in 1949 where he had several shows and his career was on a rise. Among the many influences on the artist, the art movement of the early 20th century in Europe, Cubism, with its proponents Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque at the forefront contributed to shaping much of Souza's works. He combined fierce lines with cruel humour. Nudes, landscapes and portraits - he painted in every style and in every medium, even inventing ‘chemical alterations’, a method of drawing with the use of chemical solvent on a printed page without destroying the glossy surface. This helped the artist to experiment with the layering of multiple imagery, thus creating several simultaneous narratives.
Backed by the patronage of Eugene Schuster, of the London Arts Group gallery, in Detroit, Souza migrated to New York in 1967, where he received the Guggenheim International Award. Success waxed and waned in the years that followed, though his reputation was ultimately cemented. Throughout his life, his work appeared in the world’s major art spaces, including the Halles de L’lle in Geneva, the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., Bose Pacia in New York, the Royal Academy of Arts in London and many others in Paris, London, Dubai and New Delhi.
One of the most expensive artworks Birth, 1955, sold for a whopping $2.5 million at a Christie’s auction in 2008, setting quite a record of its own.
“Francis Souza was my mentor. I came into the art world because of him. He is the most significant Indian painter.” - M.F. Husain, artist
#Raza
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1922, Babariya, Madhya Pradesh, India
Lived and worked in New Delhi
Died in 2016
A founding member of the Progressive Artists' Group in 1948, Syed Haider Raza was a pioneer for the cause of Modern Indian Art. The unique energy vibrating with colour in his early landscapes became more subtle later on but equally if not more, dynamic. Although the paintings are non-representational, the combination of bright scorching colours and powerful brushstrokes succeed in invoking the vibrancy and spirit of both the Indian language and its people.
In the Sixties, Raza drifted away from realistic landscapes towards ‘gestural expressionism’, a form of abstraction that was inspired by the works of American artist Rothko. Ultimately, the themes and forms for Raza’s paintings evolved from his childhood memories and impressions – life in the densest forests of Madhya Pradesh, close to the river Narmada and in proximity of nature, the bright colours of the Indian market, and a black dot to meditate on drawn by a schoolteacher for the six-year-old Raza. Those visions and forms he carried in his memory were animated on the canvas through the use of geometrical lines and intense patches, bursts of colour. The black dot became a starting point that transmitted into a series of Raza’s paintings known as Bindu – a symbol of divine and artistic creativity, the essence of any form and movement.
In addition to numerous solo shows in galleries around the world, his work has been included in international exhibitions in cities like New York, Washington D.C., and Oxford, at the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, and in the Biennales of Venice, Sao Paulo and Menton (France). He won numerous international honors along the way, including the Prix de la Critique (1956), and the Padma Shri, one of the highest civilian honors awarded by the Indian Government (1981). In 1983, he was elected Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi.
“Raza has always been a pilgrim of intensity.” - Ranjit Hoskote, poet, critic, cultural theorist
#Akbar Padamsee
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1928, Mumbai
Died in 2019
Although never formally a part of the Bombay Progressives, Akbar Padamsee was influential in shaping the group’s ideology and carrying it to the pinnacles of excellence. It was at J.J. School of Art that he met Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Gaitonde and Souza, the members of the Progressive Artists Group . Using a variety of mediums like oil paintings, watercolours, sculpture, photography and printmaking, Padamsee’s work explores genres like nudes, heads and metascapes, mirroring much of post- independence India’s struggle with body, figure and abstraction. Although known as a painter, Padamsee has experimented with a variety of mediums like filmmaking, photography, computer graphics and printmaking. Initially using nude photography to assist in his drawing, it was at a much later stage that he discovered photography as a tool of study in the properties of light.
Kalidas’s Abhigyanam Shakuntalam introduced the artist to two controllers of time—the sun and the moon. This idea swayed him so much that around 1970s he decided to translate the verse pictorially across the canvas as metascapes or metaphorical landscapes. He has a deep and abiding interest in Sanskrit texts, a glimpse of which finds resonance in his statement on sun-moon metascapes of the mid seventies. In an interview Padamsee says “in the introductory stanzas of Kalidasa’s Abhijnanashakuntalam he describes the sun and the moon as the controllers on time – ‘ye dve kal vighattah’, and water as a source of all seeds – “sarva beej prakriti”. I would never have thought of painting the sun and the moon together if it were not for this. I felt I could use the elements – water, earth, sky – without referring to any particular landscape – a metaphysical landscape”.
He had several solo exhibitions in India culminating in retrospectives in Mumbai and New Delhi. He has participated in important group exhibitions at the Centre National des Arts Plastiques, in Paris; the National Gallery of Modern Art, in New Delhi; the Museum of Modern Art, in Oxford, UK; and at the Royal Academy of Arts, in London. His work has also exhibited at the Biennales of São Paulo, Tokyo and Venice. He lives and works in Mumbai.
“"The conscious mind is like a monkey bitten by a scorpion. It is never still. As a result most of our unconscious feelings escape us. An artist needs to be in silence.” - Akbar Padamsee
#V S Gaitonde
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Nagpur, India
Died 2001, New Delhi, India
Lived and worked in New Delhi
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde is one of India's most profound and evocative artists, who has established his eminent presence and impressed his sublime vision into the canons of contemporary Indian art. In 1947, along with other artist friends, he founded the 'Progressive Artist Group', with a broad awareness to break away from the past, from a manner oppressively weighed down by colonial academism and clichéd Indianness to pave the way for an international idiom. Gaitonde played a vital role in establishing the foundations of abstraction in India. It can be said that he was an artist who was indeed ahead of time who ventured into the mode of abstraction.
The break down of representation seen in his use of symbols, calligraphic elements and hieroglyphs served as a bridge into Gaitonde’s later fully abstracted paintings, as his concurrent study of Zen Buddhism began to influence his though process and his art. Influenced by Zen philosophy and ancient calligraphy, his works have an inherent structure and control on the midst of their stream of consciousness composition. The mysterious and personalized hieroglyphs of Gaitonde are the manifestations of intuitions invested in the eternal and meaningful silence, seeking to open up the space. In Gaitonde’s works a spiritual sublimation was created and the translucent planes created an underwater ambience. The reclusive master experimented with form and shape in his works evoking subliminal depths in his works.
Deriving his inspiration from Post-War artists like Paul Klee,Wassily Kandinsky and Joan Miro which he encountered during his few months travelling in the United States on a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, Gaitonde began his series of experimentation with form and light renouncing the representation of recognisable form on canvas. He is known for his monochromes depicting his mastery over light and depth and was a firm believer in non-conformism. His works express his self-reflective and reclusive nature
In 2013, one of Gaitonde's untitled painting sold for ₹237 million (US$3.5 million), set a record for an Indian artist at Christie's debut auction in India.
While he lived, his work appeared in solo shows in New Delhi, Mumbai and New York; posthumously, his work has appeared in dozens of group shows around the world, and, in November, 2014 a solo retrospective was held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, which travelled to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Venice in 2015.
““Everything starts from silence. The silence of the brush. The silence of the canvas. The silence of the painting knife.”- V S Gaitonde
#Ram Kumar
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1924, Shimla, India
Died in 2018
Following the romantic notions of the artist as a figure of solitude, Ram Kumar manages to lead a reclusive life where his art becomes the core of his interactions. This silence in the public realm is transferred in his abstract paintings, creating images of calm serenity on the surface. However these images of quietness are reflective of boundaries based on class restrictions and inner struggle in an industrialised urban setting. He portrayed unemployed youth, lonely women, figures which lacked emotions, revealing through the contours of the body, pale stark faces with penetrable gaze. Their faces and expressions reflect their coldness
Ram Kumar initially started painting figurations, and later moved on to abstraction. From the 1940s he started associating himself with SH Raza and learned from Fernand Leger in Paris, and became increasingly interested in European post-war art from where the dark and fatalistic preoccupations were most probably derived. Cities have always been sources of inspiration for his paintings, among which the city Benaras (now Varanasi) occupies a special place in his artistic output. The city’s architectural beauty and unusual perspectives provide him with the visual vocabulary .The idea of celebration and mourning that exemplifies life in the city speak of a hope amidst fading away. This lived duality becomes a working metaphor for Ram Kumar to speak about the state of mind of human life.
In his lifetime, Kumar’s work has been in more 35 solo exhibitions in India, with retrospectives in Bombay, New Delhi and Kolkata. He has also participated in group shows in Geneva, Paris, and others and at the biennales of São Paulo, Tokyo and Venice, as well as the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Arts Council of Great Britain. In 1993, a large retrospective of his work was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. He was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the Indian Government in 1979, one of India’s highest civilian awards.
“When one is young and beginning, one's work is dominated by content, by ideas, but as one grows older, one turns to the language of painting itself. I have grown detached. I want to find the same peace that the mystics found.” - Ram Kumar
#Tyeb Mehta
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1925, Kapadvanj, Gujarat, India
Died 2009, Mumbai
Lived and worked in Mumbai and London
Not every day a man with as exceptional artistic calibre as Tyeb Mehta is born. A supremely talented Indian painter, Tyeb Mehta’s paintings epitomized the modern language of Indian art. He is revered to as a cultural hero who through his paintings brought out the evils of the contemporary society, most dominantly their suffering, anguish and dilemma. Born at a time when the country was experiencing nationalism at its peak, events and experiences from his personal life shaped much of his artistic career. The spirit of nationalism and the distress that came with partition were strongly portrayed on his canvas. He was later inspired by Francis Bacon’s expressionist paintings and minimalist art of New York. What made Tyeb Mehta the most noted artist of India was the fact the he was the first Indian contemporary artist whose works were sold for over a million dollars. Furthermore, he also led to what eventually became the great Indian art boom in the country.
Tyeb Mehta’s simplicity is furthered to add another form of segregated quality to it with his Diagonal series. These paintings are qualified with a diagonal running across the canvas, breaking the visual fluency into two while maintaining the other segregations with different block colours. This forms a visual marker to situate polarities of ideas and actions within the same canvas. Retaining an inimitable Tyeb Mehta used a few images, which have been worked at in different situation. The most significant ones are the trussed bull, Kali the falling figure, the diagonal cutting across these works. Mehta was influenced by French Modernism. The anguish displayed in his work reflected his own experiences from the struggle within oneself and the dreadful memory of a man whose death Mehta had seen during the India-Pakistan partition. It also displayed the horror of the partition followed by the state of turmoil in the sub-continent which still continues.
In his lifetime he was awarded the Prix Nationale in Cagne-sur-Mer, in 1974, and received the Kalidas Samman from the Madhya Pradesh State Government in 1988.He was also awarded Gold Medal by the President of India on the occasion of Lalit Kala Akademie golden Jubilee Celebration in 2004. He also received Padma Bhushan by Govt. of India in 2007. He passed in 2009.
“His painterly frame occasionally assumes the magnitude of the monumental, where image, tone and space coalesce towards an ascending truth.” - Yahodhara Dalmia, curator
#Jehangir Sabavala
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1922, Mumbai, India
Died 2011, Mumbai, India
Lived and worked in Mumbai
Born into an affluent Parsi family in Bombay in 1922, he studied in the best-known art institutions in the world. He began with the J.J. School of Art and received his diploma in 1944. He then traveled abroad and studied at the Heatherly School of Art in London from 1945 to 1947. All these resulted in an understated charm, elegance, erudition which made him stand out in a sea of also-rans.
Jehangir Sabavala's modernist style of painting is deeply engrained with classical influence. His art is a mixture of academic, impressionist, and cubist textures, forms and colours. He preferred to work most often in oils, creating landscapes that had/ have remarkable depth and sentiment. Covered in middle tones and veiled light, his paintings evoke a feeling of solitude, tranquility and contemplation.
Arun Khopkar's film on Sabavala's life and art, Colours of Absence, won the National Award in 1994.In 2010, another film about his life was made, The Inheritance of Light: Jehangir Sabavala.
In 2010, one of his serene landscapes called Casuarina Line fetched Rs 17 million at a Saffronart auction. One of his paintings titled Vespers 1, was sold for £253,650 (Rs. 21 million) at a Bonhams sale in London. Three monographs have been published on this artist already, by eminent art publishers including the house of Tata- McGraw-Hill and the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi. ‘Colours of Absence’, a film on his life, won the National Award in 1994. Sabavala was awarded the ‘Padma Shri’ by the Government of India in 1977, and the Lalit Kala Ratna by the President of India in 2007. Jehangir Sabavala passed away in 2011.
“My art, a mixture of academic, impressionist and cubist texture, form and colour, acquired a distinct style in the mid ’60s. And with each step I have evolved a new experience. But if I look back, I find I have carried all the elements forward." - Sabavala
#Jamini Roy
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1887, Bankura, West Bengal, India
Died 1972, Kolkata
Lived and worked in Kolkata
Born in 1887 in a small village in Beliatore, Bankura district, West Bengal, Jamini Roy joined the Government School of Art, Kolkata in 1903. He was one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, whose artistic originality and contribution to the emergence of modern art in India remains unquestionable.
He began his career by painting in the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits, very much in keeping with his training in a British academic system. Yet, by 1925, Roy had begun experimenting along the lines of popular bazaar paintings sold outside the Kalighat temple in Kolkata. By the early 1930s, Roy made a complete switch to indigenous materials to paint on woven mats, cloth and wood coated with lime. The inspiration for painting on woven mats was the textures he found in Byzantine art, which he had seen in colour photographs. It occurred to him that painting on a woven mat might make for an interesting mosaic-like surface.
Roy held several one-man exhibitions and numerous group shows. His works can be found in several private and public collections, institutions and museums all over the world, including the Lalit Kala Academy in Delhi and museums in Germany and the United States of America.
He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1955. Jamini Roy died on 24 April 1972 in Kolkata, where he had lived all his life.
“Roy’s admiration for rural folk art was politically motivated. It was part of a nationalistic desire to find an artistic style free from colonialism. His works of men and women explore the economy of line, the beauty of gesture and the compositional clarity of the frontal perspective,” Ms. Nair added.” - critic-scholar Uma Nair
#B Prabha
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1933, Bela, India
Died 2001, Nagpur, India
Lived and worked in Mumbai
Born in Bela, a small town near Nagpur, B Prabha, a foremost contemporary Indian painter had an instantly recognizable style of painting. Her paintings covered a wide range of themes which included landscapes, still lifes and human figures. Social issues like hunger and homelessness were also depicted in her paintings. She is popular for graceful elongated figures of pensive tribal women in her paintings, with each canvas in a single dominant color. Even her landscapes and still life paintings (like flower vases) have an Indian touch to them.
Prabha observed both urban and rural women in great detail. She not only painted their lives but also their sentiments. She found different women belonging to different strata of the society to be suffering differently and bearing the weight without a murmur.
Prabha once said that her aim was to “paint the trauma and tragedy of women,” this stance is commendable at a time when Indian women were rather oppressed. Her career graph, encompassing her journey from a humble village to the hustle-bustle of a city was quite interesting. Her work has been exhibited widely in India and abroad. By the time of her death, her work had been shown in over 50 exhibitions. She passed away in 2001. In 2008, her paintings were included in shows like ‘Winter Moderns’ at Aicon Gallery, New York; and ‘Pot Pourri’ at Gallery Beyond, Mumbai.
“I want to paint the trauma and tragedy of women” - B Prabha
#Anjolie Ela Menon
Indian Modern Artist
Born in 1940
Lives and works in Delhi
Anjolie Ela Menon (born 1940) is one of India's leading artists. Her paintings are in several major collections. Most recently (2006), a major work "Yatra" was acquired by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, California. Her preferred medium is oil on masonite, though she has also worked in other media, including glass and water colour. She is a well known muralist. She was awarded the Padma Shree in 2000.
Anjolie Ela Menon's preferred medium was oil on masonite, which she applied by using a series of translucent colours and thin washes. In addition to oil paintings and murals, she worked in several other mediums, including computer graphics and Murano glass. She is best known for her religious-themed works, portraits, and nudes that incorporated a vibrant colour palette and were rendered in a variety of styles ranging from cubism to techniques that recalled the artists of the European Renaissance. In 1997 she, for the first time displayed non-figurative work, including Buddhist abstracts. She represented India at the Paris, Algiers, and São Paulo Biennales and at three Triennales in New Delhi
“Dissatisfaction is the source of growth, I encourage artists to abandon known (and often acclaimed) & ground for new territory”.” - Anjolie Ela Menon
#Krishen Khanna
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1925, Faislabad, Pakistan
Lives and works in New Delhi
Born in 1925 in what is now Faislabad in Pakistan, Krishen Khanna grew up in Lahore, only studying art after he graduated from college at evening classes held at the Mayo School of Art there. In 1947, Khanna’s family moved to Shimla as a result of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and Khanna was deeply affected by not only the change in his personal life, but also the socio-political chaos that reigned around him. His early works are reproductions of the scenes that were indelibly imprinted in his memory during this period.
Most of Khanna’s work is figurative; he chose to not explore the abstraction that most of his contemporaries were delving into. In an interview with Saffronart he said “I used to do abstracts earlier and I have now moved on to human forms. I thought that the person or the individual is being neglected – the person in a particular situation who is influenced by the conditions around. I want to now emphasise the human beings caught up in their particular condition.”
In 1964, Khanna was artist-in-residence at the American University, Washington D.C. In 1965, he won a fellowship from the Council for Economic and Cultural Affairs, New York following the travel grant they had awarded him three years earlier. Recognising his immense contribution to Indian Art, the Government of India has bestowed several honours upon him including the Lalit Kala Ratna from the President of India in 2004 and the Padma Shri in 1990.
"Krishen Khanna has tended to engage with his subjects as if in an extended and somewhat unstructured conversatoin between old friend. Effectively, the paintings constitute a powerful psychological engagement, on that also serves as a document of the passage of time in modern India.” Gayatri Sinha, critic, curator
#Amrita Sher-Gil
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1913, Budapest, Hungary
Died 1941, Lahore, British India (present day Pakistan)
Lived and worked in Paris, France and later in Amritsar and Shimla in India and Lahore, now in Pakistan
She was a pioneer in the history of modern Indian art, and in the 28 years of her brief life was a revolution personified. Born in Budapest in 1913 to a Hungarian mother and Indian father, Sher-Gil was a tour de force in the landscape of Modernism in British India
Having received her training at Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris, the Indian Hungarian artist set off for India in 1934, declaring "Europe belongs to Picasso, Matisse, Braque and many others. India belongs only to me”. Amrita Sher-Gil painted the inner world of women like few other Indian painters had, depicting them in countless moods and forms .
Having mastered the western oil painting technique, her depiction of rural life and people took a warmer, earthier tone. Sher-Gil had a special fascination for the colour red that is evident as it stands out against the dark tones of her background or is often contrasted with green and white. An exceptional use of white always marks Amrita's paintings . In Village Scene, 1938, the white of the women's clothes glimmer against their dark bodies and the white walls in the backdrop. She was all know for Self-portraits.
"Amrita Sher-Gil did not have world enough, nor time enough, to realise in full her rare aesthetic vision.” - Raul de Loyola Furtado, art historian
#Raja Ravi Varma
Indian Pre-Modern Artist
Born 1848, Travancore, Kerala, India
Died 1906, Trivandrum, Kerala, India
Raja Ravi Varma, also known as 'The Father of Modern Indian Art' was an Indian painter of the 18th century who attained fame and recognition for portraying scenes from the epics of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. He was born on April 29, 1848 in Kilimanoor, Travancore and demised on October 2, 1906 in Attingal, Travancore at the age of 58.
He received first painting lessons from his uncle Raja Varma. He also learnt oil painting from European Painter, Theodre Jensen, and Alagiri Naidu, a court Painter of Swati Tiruna, Maharaja of Travancore.
He in his creative endeavours attempted to blend Indian mythology, natural aesthetics and European realism. He left us what has now come to be associated with academic realism . His oil paintings and oleograph reproductions reached out every Indian possible in his and in later times. Raja Ravi Varma, a self-taught artist, furthered his creative talent by listening to classical music, watching Kathakali dances, oral narrations of epic stories, reading ancient manuscripts preserved by his family. His first commissioned works was a painting of family group in which he painted ten-twelve family members.
His works are mostly in three forms: portraits, portrait based compositions and theatrical compositions based on myths and legends . Between 1870 and 1878, he painted portraits for Indian aristocracy and British officials, maintaining perfect gesture, depicting sensitivity and subtlety. His portraits and compositions exude elegance, fragrance of the subject. His genius lay in exactly imitating their attire and demeanour for which he became renowned. He depicted, curvy, elegant, and serene, women draped in traditional attire, subtle complexion, intriguing gesture and eyes, captivating enough to hold viewer’s eyes.
“There Is No Failure. It's Only Un-Finished Success.”- Raja Ravi Varma
#Badri Narayan
Indian Modern Artist
Born 1929, Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh
Died in 2013
Born in July 1929, in Secunderabad, Andhra Pradesh, the self-taught artist Badri Narayan has been painting for over 45 years. During this time, he has worked as an art teacher and an artist, but has always remained a deeply introspective individual. This self-reflection and autobiographical perspective is the most constant theme in Narayan's work.
The artist’s paintings are narrative, and titles like ‘Queen Khemsa's Dream of Hamsa’ and ‘Meeting at Midstream’, are the starting points from where one must unravel the complexities presented by the paintings, in order to interpret and understand them. Symbolism is a recurring feature of his works, though sometimes, he also uses popular icons of Indian culture like Ganesha. He explains, "I have picked up the imagery that surrounds me, the one I am born into, and it comes naturally." Narayan draws heavily from Indian mythology and metaphors and acknowledges the influence of the Indian miniature tradition in his works. The artist believes in the two-dimensionality of painting, and prefers to work in a smaller format; one that he finds practical and well suited for the watercolours that have been his preferred medium for several years. Narayan has also worked with etchings, woodcuts and ceramics and illustrated some children’s books.
Narayan’s first solo exhibition of paintings was held at the Hyderabad Art Society in 1954. Since then, he has held well over fifty solo shows including several exhibitions at Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai. He has also exhibited his work at Mon Art Gallerie, Kolkata; Sakshi Art Gallery, Bangalore; and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
Badri Narayan’s work has also been featured in several group shows, the most recent ones being 'The Root of Everything' at Gallery Mementos, Bangalore, in 2009; ‘Different Strokes’ presented by Tulika Arts at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2007-08; ‘Journey 2’ at Gallery Art and Soul, Mumbai, in 2007; and ‘Spectra’ at Gallerie Zen, Bangalore, in 2007. He has also participated in the Bharat Bhavan Biennale, Bhopal, in 1992; the 7th Indian Triennale, New Delhi, in 1991’ the 1st and 2nd International Triennales, New Delhi, in 1968 and 1971 respectively; the 5th International Biennale of Prints, Tokyo, in 1966-67; and the 2nd International Biennale, Paris, in 1961.
Please note: There are many Indian artists which have recognised globally. The above list mentions the few of well-known Indian painters.
Important Message*:
This document gives brief information about Indian painters and it is created to help art lovers to understand more about the Indian artists. Hope it helps you. Please note that the few images used in this document fall in copyright law, please make sure that you understand the copyright terms and conditions before sharing or using the document for other purposes apart from reading.
Image Attributions:
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Image used for Artist
Attribution/Source
M F Husain Image 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._F._Husain
S H Raza Image 1
By Pantalaskas [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASayed_Haider_Raza_(1995).png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Sayed_Haider_Raza_%281995%29.png
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Raza
Image 2
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ARaza_painting.JPG
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/93/Raza_painting.JPG
By Sayed Haider Raza (painting) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Raza
FN Souza Image 1
By Fredericknoronha (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Indian_artist_of_Goan_origin,_Francis_Newton_Souza.jpg
Tyeb Mehta Image 1
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ATyeb_Mehta.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Tyeb_Mehta.jpg
By Cea - www.flickr.com, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18303187
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyeb_Mehta
Anjolie Ela Menon Image 1
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AShOObh-_Ashok_Pandey_%26_Anjolie_Ela_Menon.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/ShOObh-_Ashok_Pandey_%26_Anjolie_Ela_Menon.jpg
By Shoobhgroup - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46812207
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anjolie_Ela_Menon
The word content sources are listed below:
-https://fineartsenthusiast.wordpress.com/
-https://en.wikipedia.org/
-Reports and Research findings on the internet.
-Books written by art critics
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