Newman Huo

    TITLED Modern Art India: The Ethos of Modernity, a selection of 97 paintings and sculptures from the National Gallery of Modern Art (NFMA) in New Delhi, India, are on display at the Shenzhen Museum until Feb. 28.

    After being displayed at the Sichuan Museum in Chengdu, Shenzhen Museum is the second stop for the exhibition. It will move to the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou after Shenzhen.

    Organized by the Indian and Chinese ministries of culture, the exhibition is an integral part of the Festival of India in China to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

    Rajeev Lochan, director of the NFMA, and Indra Mani Pandey, Indian consul general in Guangzhou, attended the exhibition’s opening ceremony Tuesday.

    “The exhibition is an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the development of Indian art beginning from the 1850s,” said Lochan.

    “The exhibition includes works of some of the most outstanding artists during these times,” he said. “I’m confident it will help Chinese audiences better understand India’s distinctive past and exemplary present.”

    The history of modern Indian art traces a complex trajectory. Modernism in Indian art was a slow process against the backdrop of severe ruptures in the social, economic and political fabric of India, especially in the context of the colonial encounter.

    The Company Period and ‘gentlemen artists’

    With the advent of the British East India Company in the 1700s, a breach occurred in traditional Indian society, and this deeply affected the tradition of Indian art. With the destruction of the power of the princely courts, artists lost their local patronage.

    With an influx of British officials and their families, a new class of patrons was created, albeit one with very different tastes and new agendas.

    The Company Period was characterized by a potent encounter between local art traditions and the newly learned styles which resulted in hybrid and vibrant images that bespoke the concerns of new rulers and the tenacity of native subjects and cultural roots.

    In 1854, a project was initiated by the British Empire to “improve Indian taste as part of its moral amelioration.” The establishment of art schools attracted an influx of young men from affluent backgrounds who aspired to emulate European gentlemen artists.

    They were trained in the Western techniques of oil painting and specialized in subjects such as portraits, landscapes and nudes.

    Of the new generation of Indian gentlemen artists, the most significant was Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906).

    Varma can be considered the first artist to establish a truly Pan-Indian style, which drew upon the Western techniques and the tradition of realism.

    The nationalist project in art

    Indian modernism also emerged in response to an urgent political need for independence and national definition.

    In the early 1900s, there was a renewed upsurge of nationalist fervor. The nationalist project in art was led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951).

    In his rejection of the colonial aesthetic, Tagore turned to Asia, most notably Japan in an effort to propose a pan-Asian aesthetic that stood independent of the Western one. The style developed by him was taken up by many students and others who formed the nationalist art movement called the Bengal School.

    Using varied artistic languages both in theme and medium, the works of artists like Nandlal Bose, B.B. Mukherjee and Ram Kinker Baij charted a pictorial history of India in the most significant decades of its fight for independence.

    In art, it also saw the emergence of the artist as an individual personality, one of the key notes of modernism. Art was used as an effective political tool, both in the satirical works of Gaganendranath Tagore as well as the robust tempera paintings of Bose.

    Rabindranath Tagore himself stood apart as a maverick, engaging with international modernism on his own terms. A Nobel laureate for literature, he began working as a visual artist at the age of 67.

    Rural India and local art also inspired Jamini Roy who formulated a unique style based on folk art traditions such as scroll paintings in a deliberate turning away form European styles like realism, impressionism and pointillism.

    Art for a newly independent nation

    The years prior to 1947 saw an increased engagement with international movements. Cities like Bombay, Delhi, Calcutta and Madras emerged as key players for a new art. One of the first art groups formed as early as 1937 was the Bombay Group of Contemporary Indian Artists, also known as the Young Turks.

    The Young Turks, including P. T. Reddy, M.T. Bhople, and C. B. Bapista, were among the first to shift focus to the importance of technique and innovation in the formal values of art.

    Calcutta continued as an important center for art, and artists such as Gopal Ghose, Paritosh Sen, and P. D. Gupta formed the Calcutta Group in 1943.

    Also significant was Bombay’s Progressive Artists Group formed in 1947. The most famous members of this group include M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara and F. N. Souza.

    In the 1960s, K. C. S. Panniker led the art movement in Madras and later J. Swaminathan would influence a generation of artists who worked in the abstract mode.

    The role of art schools, such as the J. J. School of Arts in Bombay, and the Government College of Art in Calcutta, in shaping the trajectory of Indian art cannot be underestimated.

    One of the major legacies of these art schools was the development of an individual aesthetic as opposed to a collective one. This stream continued into the 1980s in the works of artists like G. Sheikh and B. Khakhar.

    In the 1990s, with the opening up of the Indian economy to the forces of liberalization and global trade, Indian art also entered a new phase of post-modernism.

    Visual arts were freed from their relationship to two-dimensionality as the boundaries between painting, sculpture, design, and performing arts blurred. Experiments with material and scale are continuing in art as Indian artists today grapple with methods to negotiate the demands of globalization with local history, culture and concerns.

    Subodh Gupta represents one such artist who has successfully elevated local experiences to the global plane through the creation of symbols that can be read internationally through a visual syntax, while being rooted in an indigenous context.

    “As the focus of world economies shifts toward Asia, most notably China and India, it will be interesting to observe how Indian artists respond to being placed in the global spotlight,” said Lochan.

    Modern Art India:

    The Ethos of Modernity

    Dates: Through Feb. 28

    Hours: 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Closed Monday

    Add: Shenzhen Museum, 1008 Shennan Road Central, Futian District (福田区深南中路1008号深圳博物馆)

    Metro: Da Ju Yuan Station (Grand Theater Station 大剧院站), Exit B