Sarbari Roy Chowdhury 1933–current
For Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, music is the inspiration for his work. One of India’s leading sculptors, he believes that the abstraction of music can only be expressed through another abstract form. For him, music and pain are the two elements that transform an intellectual perception into an experience. Through his work of line and volume he aspires to create a visual form of music, seeking forms that contain rhythmical lines similar to Indian classical music. Alberto Giacometti (whom he met), the man and his art, have strongly influenced him. In Sarbari’s own words: “I believe that every artist’s source of inspiration is Adirasa. That may be the reason why my creation is inspired by the subtle beauty of the human body.”

Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan
bronze
27.5cm x 24cm x 32.5cm | 10.75" x 9.5" x 32.5"
1971 | from private collection

Kingshuk Sarkar 1972–current
Kingshuk Sarkar could have bid goodbye to his student days along with the old century and old millennium when he finished his courses at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, in 1999. Instead, Kingshuk went on to the Kyoto University of Art and Design to train in the Japanese style of painting. He also mastered techniques of Japanese calligraphy and Sumi painting. This art practice and philosophy have profoundly influenced Kingshuk’s visual expression which is deeply rooted in Asian sensibilities. His art has an overall Asian significance and connotation. Kingshuk aspires to unify, within the constraints of a fragmented and fractured society, the indigenous with the global context. His spontaneous visual rendering bears direct reflection of this recurring concern.

Chase
carbon ink, acrylic, animal glue, synthetic glue over
cotton stretched on canvas (triptych)
182.5cm x 106.5cm (each) | 72" x 42" (each)
2007 | Con No. 4577 (a,b,c)

He
carbon ink, acrylic, animal glue, synthetic glue
over cotton stretched on canvas (diptych)
152.5cm x 152.5cm (each) | 60” x 60” (each)
2007 | Con No. 4578

Paritosh Sen 1918–current
Paritosh Sen was only twenty-five when he, along with some other young artists of Calcutta, formed the Calcutta Group to usher in a new age in Indian art. Looking West for inspiration, Paritosh Sen studied painting not only at the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta but in some of the most prestigious art institutions of Paris such as Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts. Widely travelled, Paritosh Sen was amongst the very few young Indian artists to have had the opportunity to meet and spend time with the great modern masters of our time like Pablo Picasso and Brancusi. All these experiences left a lasting influence on Paritosh Sen the artist. A figurative painter, he uses bold lines against a two-dimensional picture plane to express his views on contemporary life.

The Gentle Touch
acrylic on canvas
183cm x 122cm | 72” x 48”
1995 | from private collection

Shakila 1969–current
Shakila has no formal training in art but the skill with which she finishes her collages is something to marvel at. Shakila does not go in for the textual richness and surface relief which motivated cubists and constructivists to introduce collage into their painting as a technical innovation. Nor is she, like pop artists, interested in the new syntaxing of whole printed images for inversion of meaning, although she does construct new images by assembling bits of already printed images. But, in the process, she totally changes the original. She only chooses strips of paper that have the right hues, shades and tones so that she can give her images volume and foreshorten them when required. Her experience of life is reflected in her work but her flights of vision, including in the choice of paper she uses in her imagery, often lead to surprising constructions that, one suspects, are quite conscious and not random at all.

A Scene
collage on canvas
183cm x 152cm | 72” x 60”
2007 | Con No. 4612

Lalu Prosad Shaw 1937–current
Lalu Prosad Shaw is a master of both printmaking as well as tempera. In printmaking, Lalu Prosad expresses his modernity, both in terms of technique and imagery. His imagery is taken from everyday life, depicting simple objects and events. In his small-sized tempera paintings one notices stylistic elements derived from the nineteenth-century Company School paintings and the Kalighat pat painting tradition. His single figures and still life are done in a style that is very indigenous and, yet, very sophisticated.

Jinsook Shinde 1952–current
Born in South Korea, Jinsook Shinde did her BFA from Hong IK College of Art in Seoul and then studied printmaking at Atelier 17 under Prof. S.W.Hayter in Paris. After that she worked at Glasgow Print Studio in UK and came to live in Mumbai only in 1983. Since then she has received, among others, the Bombay Arts Society Award, the Maharashtra State Art Purchase and the D.G. Nadkarni Art Critic prize. She was also selected for the Seoul Arts Festival for overseas artists and the Tenth Triennale, India. Jinsook has held five solo exhibitions, six joint exhibitions with Vilas Shinde and several group shows in India and abroad. She has also participated in several artists’ camps.

Red
pigment on paper
108.5cm x 124.5cm | 42.75” x 49"
2007 | Con No. 4666

Mayank Kumar Shyam 1987–current
The involvement of artists like Mayank Kumar Shyam in the traditional practices of tribal and folk cultures tells its own story: it brings the subaltern perspective to India’s colonial past and the freedom movement. Especially when they are as gifted as Mayank Shyam, who is one of the finest practitioners of the ancient Gondi painting that is native to Madhya Pradesh. More, he has seamlessly transferred an indigenous art form to a contemporary one. In his paintings, the narrative aspect of this art has been kept but the story is about the modern city. The bird in one canvas, recalling the Garuda tales from the Vedas, is the witness and the artist is the scribe. Here, on this canvas, the ancient encounters the modern.

City
pen & ink on canvas
154.8cm x 243.7cm | 61” x 96"
2007 | Con No. 4630

Anjum Singh 1967-current
A promising young painter, Anjum Singh received her BFA from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, MFA from the Delhi College of Art and a scholarship to the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. Anjum has participated in several group exhibitions in New York, Washington and New Delhi. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Foundry Gallery, Washington. As a painter, Anjum’s work reflects post-impressionist Matissean compositions in colour and form –– where blues-greens-oranges applied on flat two-dimensional pictorial space do not fuse into harmonious tonalities but maintain their own intense identities, clashing against one another and setting up a “movement” of their own. Anjum was awarded an internship in costume design at the Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, Washington, and received the sixth Yuva Mahotsava Award, Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi.

Chakka Jam
oil on canvas
167.8cm x 167.8cm | 66” x 66"
2004 | Con No. 3523

Arpita Singh 1937–current
Arpita Singh likes to declare with great pride: “I am a woman; I think as a woman, I see as a woman. My references are always feminine. This is the starting point.” In her paintings the inner world of a woman, her home and her life loom large. Using a thick textured surface, especially for her oil on canvas paintings, Arpita creates an element of tension which, she says, is a reflection of life around her. Influenced by Western masters like Paul Klee and Marc Chagall and Bengali folk art such as the pat paintings and kantha embroidery traditions, Arpita creates a world which is part naive and part real. She uses simple objects like telephone, aeroplane, bunches of flower, bushes, pots and pans, child-like graffiti on walls and over-crowded roads, snarled traffic, even guns and violent death as icons of contemporary life. According to Arpita, culture and tradition is handed down from woman to woman, mother to daughter, like the vratas or rituals performed by women in Bengal for the welfare of their family.

Men Sitting, Men Standing
oil on canvas
122cm x 92cm | 48” x 36.25"
2004 | Con No. 3433

Dayanita Singh 1961–current
Dayanita Singh studied Visual Communication at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad after which she pursued photo-journalism and documentary photography at the International Centre of Photography in New York. Since 1989, she has been working as a photojournalist for many magazines and journals. Her works have been widely exhibited in India and abroad. As an author and photographer, she has been highly acclaimed for her three books namely, ‘Zakir Hussain’, ‘Myself Mona Ahmed’ and ‘Privacy’. Dayanita’s photographs, as described by Britta Schmitz in ‘Privacy’, “offer surprising, personal details of contemporary Indian society”. As Britta notes, “. . . She depicts and investigates what her motif might communicate on a personal, social, psychological and historical level. Her images sharpen our sensibilities for another environment, by encouraging us to take in the specific moods of complex as a whole. . . Many of the photos are reminiscent of already existing images and paintings. . .” Dayanita lives and works from New Delhi.

Ghandhi's Room in Anand Bhavan, Allahbad
silver gelatin print mounted on aluminium
100cm x 100cm | 39.4” x 39.4"
2000 | Con No.

Paramjit Singh 1935–current
Paramjit Singh, India’s leading landscape painter, honed his skills at the Delhi School of Art under Sailoz Mookherjea. Over the years, Paramjit has created his own unique vision and style. With a brush loaded with pigments and with short brisk strokes, Paramjit creates in his paintings what painter Gulam Mohummad Sheikh had once described as “visual hypnotism”.

Click here for Paramjit Singh's Artist Represented Page

F.N. Souza 1924-2001
An iconoclast known for his powerful imagery, Francis Newton Souza was born into an orthodox Roman Catholic family in Goa. He went to Bombay to study painting at the J.J. School but was expelled before he could graduate because of his perceived anti-establishment attitude. It was this spirit of independence that made him rebel against the existing art scene of India which was dominated by outmoded British academic ideas and the revivalist Bengal School. In his search for a new vocabulary Souza, like many other rebellious young painters of his generation, began to look towards Europe, especially to Paris, for inspiration. Souza was the catalyst who, along with other radicals like Husain, Akbar Padamsee, Raza, Gaitonde, K.H. Ara and H.A. Gade, formed the Progressive Artists Group in Bombay in 1947. As the leader of the group, Souza wrote the manifesto. The forming of the Progressive Artists Group and the Independence of India soon after were almost symbolic of India’s new identity. By 1949, however, the PAG fell apart and Souza left for London. Although the group had disbanded in India, its spirit was kept alive in France by Souza, Raza, Padamsee and a few others. They would experiment together and sometimes even paint similar subjects. Another source of influence were the stained glass windows of the medieval churches of Europe. The effect of these diverse influences came to be reflected in Souza’s works as bold linear imagery and flat colours set against a two-dimensional picture plane that became the dominant stylistic features of Souza’s paintings and which he used to create powerful and provocative imageries.

Reclining Odalisque
chemical painting on paper
29.6cm x 39.8cm | 11.5” x 15.5"
1994 | Con No. 3027

Anupam Sud 1944-current
Trained at the Delhi College of Art and the Slade School of Arts, London, Anupam Sud’s major contribution to contemporary Indian art has been as a graphic artist. Acknowledged as one of India’s leading printmakers, Anupam is known for her finely crafted etchings. Her preoccupation is with human forms and their configuration within a highly demarcated space. It is this sensitive handling of space along with the use of powerful sculptural forms which creates an interesting link between the figures, resulting in prints which are visually provocative.

Purush & Prakriti, Zodiac Signs
graphic
49cm x 48.8cm | 19.25” x 19.25"
1993 | Con No. TL-48 (a-m)

J. Swaminathan 1928-1994
Painter, poet and political activist, J. Swaminathan played a major role in contemporary Indian art both as a painter as well as an ideologue. A founder member of Group 1890, Swaminathan gave Indian art a whole new direction. Instead of Westernization, Swaminathan began to work towards a new set of values based on an indigenous identity. In 1960, Swaminathan’s paintings, which he called Colour Geometry of Space, were of rocks and a tiny bird caught suspended in animated flight set against a brilliant yellow Indian sun. These reflected Swaminathan’s own mystical bent of mind and showed his closeness to the European painter Paul Klee who, in his turn, was known for his affinity to Hindu mysticism and calligraphic symbolism.

Text - Detexted
wax, oil, and pigments on canvas
183cm x 183cm | 72” x 72"
1993 | Con No. TL-2

Abanindranath Tagore 1871-1951
Born into the illustrious Tagore family, Abanindranath Tagore’s initial education in art began with lessons from Oriento Ghilardi (then vice-principal of Government School of Art, Calcutta) and Charles Palmer (from the Royal College of Art, London). However, in no time both Abanindranath and Palmer realized that rigid British academic discipline was not suited for this sensitive young pupil. Finally, after seeing Abanindranath’s works based on Krishnalila, Palmer decided that formal training was no longer needed since Abanindranath had already discovered his own indigenous style. Abanindranath joined the Government School of Art as a teacher at the behest of E.B. Havell, the then principal. In 1905, Havell made him his vice-principal. Meanwhile, Abanindranath had mastered the Japanese wash technique under Count Okakura and his Japanese pupils. It was in 1905 too that Abanindranath’s style found full culmination in the painting ‘Bharat Mata’ which virtually launched the Bengal School movement and the first modernist vibrations in twentieth-century Indian art. The new visual language created by Abanindranath was moored deeply in the Swadeshi ideals of the turn of the century. Abanindranath was also a fine writer, highly erudite and extremely sensitive. His art therefore was idyllic, mystical, profound and deeply rooted to the sentiments of his time. The Bengal School movement thus caught the imagination of the entire subcontinent and influenced most painters across the region.

Untitled
water colour on paper
26cm x 12cm | 10.25” x 4.75"
undated | from private collection

Chintan Upadhyay 1972– current
Chintan Upadhyay is a name to reckon with, a graduate from M.S. University, Baroda, he is one of young India’s daring artists. The references in Chintan’s works to Bollywood, billboards and advertisements are palpable and the outcome of a conscious decision to use these media to get his own message across. His work challenges the viewer to look at oneself afresh and forces us to confront our hypocrisies about sex, our bodies, consumerism, thought and visual culture. The artist does this by using the language of advertisements which sell products through selling sex.

Designer Babies
oil and acrylic on canvas
182cm x 182cm | 71.5” x 71.5"
2004 | from private collection

Ram Singh Urveti 1970–current
Deeply rooted in his tribal traditions, Ram Singh Urveti has recently been using modern colours and expressing contemporary sensibility to add new dimension to the tribal art form of Madhya Pradesh that he practises to such perfection. His works are confident, sensitive and bold, his paintings are usually dramatic and animated. One of his most powerful canvases is about the atrocities committed on tribal communities by the British and their revolt against the colonizer. The anchor-like shape in the painting can be interpreted to symbolize justice or it could be Urveti’s clever resolution of an artistic demand. The ‘anchor’ roots the painting so that the figures do not appear to float; it gives weight to the forms and figures. Urveti’s portrayal of tribal revolt is also important as it is a part of the history of India’s freedom that is rarely heard of. In this canvas, the tribals are the ones shown with garlands and trishul (trident) and the British are depicted with hats and guns. Ram Singh Urveti’s artworks have been exhibited the world over.

Near the Mahua Tree
acrylic on canvas
137.6cm x 196cm | 54” x 77"
2007 | Con No. 4628

Freedom (Swadhinta)
acrylic on canvas
111.8cm x 177.5cm | 44” x 70"
2007 | Con No. 4667

T. Vaikuntam 1942–current
T. Vaikuntam learnt his art at M.S. University, Baroda, but is known for his paintings in tempera and water colour on paper which are deeply rooted in the rural soil of his native Andhra Pradesh. His works are not large, some could even be described as miniatures. The figures, mostly of women, evoke the sense of earthy voluptuousness found in the mural and folk painting traditions of south India. On a flat, two-dimensional surface Vaikuntam’s large figures occupy nearly all of the pictorial space and express a sense of monumentality. The painter achieves this with the use of controlled and fluid lines juxtaposed with brilliant primary colours like red, green, yellow, dark brown and white while the use of simple details like caste marks, gold jewellery, flowers and an occasional parrot give his paintings a distinctively Indian flavour.

Untitled
acrylic on canvas board
60.3cm x 40.3cm | 23.75” x 15.75"
2005 | Con No. 3691

Yusuf 1952–current
For years Gwalior was Yusuf’s whole world. He was born in this former princely state in Madhya Pradesh and did both his National Diploma in Fine Arts and National Diploma in Sculpture from there. Since then Yusuf has held several one-man shows across the country and has exhibited in various group shows in India and abroad. He has been honoured with various awards including invitations to the QINGDAO International Print Biennial of China and International Asian European Biennial, Turkey. He has been an active participant in several art camps across India. His works are a part of the collections of various government institutions and several private collectors in India and abroad.

Untitled
acrylic, ink and pencil on canvas
173cm x 336cm | 68” x 132.25"
2006 | Con No. 4354

Sanjeev Sonpimpare 1969–current
This body of work by Sanjeev Sonpimpare, collected for his exhibition, is indicative of the duality which exists in contemporary, Indian, Urban life. His works are essentially conceptual but painted in a realistic style.
The juxtaposition of positive and negative spaces suggests the tug-and-pull of energy between a burgeoning, on one side, city and a somnabulist citizenry, on the reverse. It is of a collapsing space, being sucked into a void and an expanding entity - expanding into space. Like a sleeping form, breathing in and out. In Sonpimpare’s City, what it is sustained by is also the source of its decay.
Sonpimpare’s work have been labeled to be autobiographical because the artist includes his self portrait in most works. Sonpimpare says this is incidental, that he wants to share the sense of alienation which is both, a private and a universal experience, more common now than before.

Dividers
acrylic and oil on canvas
181.5cm x 106.8cm | 71.5” x 42"
2007 | Con No. 4760

K. G. Subramanyan(1924-current)
K. G. Subramanyan is a multifaceted artist. He is recognised not only as a painter, muralist and a printmaker but also as a scholar and a teacher of art. Subramanyan grew up in Kerala and Madras at a time when theosophy and nationalist swadeshi sentiments dominated India. He was imprisoned by the British for taking part in the famous 1942 Quit India Movement. On his release, his family sent him to Santiniketan, near Calcutta to pursue his interest in art at the Kala Bhavan. Founded by the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore, the educational system at Santiniketan was based on Indian culture and moral values. This was a liberating experience for the young artist. Under the tutelage of eminent artists like Nandalal Bose, Binode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, he learnt to acknowledge three basic concepts on which to base his art - ‘Nature, Tradition and Individuality.’ These ideals were to stay with K. G. Subramanyan despite his exposure to Western Modernism.
K. G. Subramanyan has achieved a successful synthesis of India’s linear folk tradition and modernism. His sense of design, especially the manner in which he plays with pictorial space by filling the entire surface with Indian fauna and flora, makes his paintings vibrant and rooted in Indian spirit.