The 1x1 Gallery is presenting an impressive exhibition of artworks by prominent pioneers of modern art movements in India. The show titled, The Singular and the Plural showcases the diversity of aesthetics and artistic production that emerged in the country as it transitioned from British colonial rule to becoming an independent modern nation.
The gallery has brought together over 100 artworks sourced from its own collection, from private collectors across the world and from the artists’ estates. They include paintings, drawings, etchings, photographs, sculptures, rugs, tapestries and jewellery by modern masters such as Abanindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, MF Husain, SH Raza, FN Souza, Akbar Padamsee, Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Ganesh Pyne and many others. The works have all been authenticated by experts and are of known provenance.
“The artists featured in this show are admired not only in India, but around the world. As one of the oldest galleries showing Indian art in Dubai, we have had a close relationship with many of them. Besides regularly hosting exhibitions of their work, we also invited them to Dubai for art camps where art lovers could watch them create their masterpieces. In recent years the gallery has focused on exhibitions by contemporary Indian artists, but we have maintained our relationship with the families, estates and collectors of the modernists, and continue to hold a large collection of their works. As the art scene in the UAE has grown and matured, I felt it was important to have an exhibition of modern Indian art and highlight the gallery’s long term connection with it. We now plan to present modernist exhibitions alongside our contemporary art shows throughout the year,” Malini Gulrajani, founder of 1x1 says.
As the title of the show indicates, modern Indian art is complex and multivalent reflecting the different political and social realities of artists from various regions and backgrounds, and the diversity of the country itself. Hence the show is divided into sections that tell stories about the modernist movements and forms of expression that emerged in different parts of the country.
The search for a visual language that could define modern India began in the early 20th century while India was still under British colonial rule. During this time, art schools established by the British Raj were teaching Western ideals of composition and perspective, embedding a British way of seeing, into Indian artistic production to serve a colonial socio-political agenda. As India’s nationalist movement grew, Indian artists felt the need to develop a visual culture of resistance. For this they turned to the indigenous history and artistic heritage of India, blending it with the visual experiments happening in Europe and elsewhere.
The Bengal School, which emerged in Kolkata and Shantiniketan was among the first to take a concrete stance against British influence. Led by Abanindranath Tagore (nephew of poet Rabindranath Tagore) in the early 20th century, this movement included artists such as Nandlal Bose, and considered a return to the techniques of Mughal miniatures to depict everyday life as part of the solution for a new avant garde. This movement is represented in the show through paintings by Tagore, his sister Sunaini Devi, Jamini Roy, Gobardhan Ash, and Sudhir Khastgir; a carpet designed by sculptor Meera Mukherjee; a sketchbook belonging to Benode Behari Mukherjee from the 1940s, and a rare series of photographs by Nemai Ghosh documenting filmmaker Satyajit Ray shooting his teacher Benode Mukherjee at work on a mural in Shanitiniketan.
In 1943 artists from Bengal such as Nirode Mazumdar and Paritosh Sen started the Calcutta group in response to famine and social upheaval, breathing new life into the art of Bengal. The show features important paintings by both Mazumdar and Sen, and by other artists from Bengal, who continued to contribute to the development of modern Indian art such as Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Jogen Chowdhury, Shyamal Dutta Rey, Sanat Kar and Sakti Burman.
In Bombay, The Progressive Artists’ Group, founded shortly after India became independent in 1947, by artists such as MF Husain, FN Souza, and SH Raza challenged existing artistic norms by looking for ways to create a new and meaningful language of Indian modernism. These artists had different styles, ranging from narrative and figurative imagery to abstraction, but they all drew upon traditional Indian aesthetics and philosophy to create a diverse yet distinctly Indian post-colonial vocabulary. The show features important paintings and sculptures by these artists such as Husain’s iconic horses, Raza’s abstract paintings, and Souza’s portraits. A portrait of Shaikh Rashid by Souza dated 1976 and a painting by Husain, depicting his vision for a museum of his art and cinema in Abu Dhabi highlight the age-old ties between India and the UAE.
The Progressive Artists’ Group was profoundly influential in changing the ethos of Indian art and almost all the major artists in the 1950s became associated with it. This period of modernist exploration and experimentation is reflected in the show through paintings and sculptures by Akbar Padamsee, a rare tapestry by VS Gaitonde, and paintings by Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, KH Ara, HA Gade and others.
Around the same time, in the Baroda School in Gujarat, artists such as Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, KG Subramanyam and Bhupen Khaker embraced narrative figuration. Among the works of these artists in the show is a rare collaborative painting by Ghulam and Nilima Sheikh, titled Man giving Woman the Moon and Woman giving Man the Earth, which beautifully blends the distinct styles of the couple.
Other works by icons of modern Indian art featured in the show include MV Dhurandar’s evocative paintings of Indian women from the 1920s, NS Bendre’s pointillist painting of Indian figures, paintings by women modernists such as Anjolie Ela Menon, Arpita Singh, and Judy Blum Reddy, sculptures, paintings, drawings and etchings by Satish Gujral, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, GR Santosh, Krishna Reddy, KK Hebbar, Badri Narayan, Jagdish Swaminathan, J Sultan Ali and Sohan Qadri.
“This exhibition is titled The Singular and The Plural because it considers the various individual voices that emerged during the inception of the Indian nation, when the search for a single discourse to embody the struggle for a unified country was most urgent. However, as the multitude of styles and diversity in subject matter suggests, the singularity of an Indian aesthetic is as much a myth as the concept of a single national ideology. The show thus reflects the plurality of linguistic, cultural, religious and aesthetic traditions that co-existed in one nation and continue to do so,” Gulrajani says.
The Singular and The Plural will run at 1x1 Gallery, Alserkal Avenue until February 28.
