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Nasreem Mohamedi -Double Sided

Born in 1937 in Lahore in undivided India, Nasreem Mohamedi is well known for her line drawings. While she mainly worked with pencil and ink on paper, she also experimented with line and form and how it could intercept the path of light.

B. Vithal: Master of The Nude

B. Vithal was born in Maharashtra in 1935. He studied at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, and secured a diploma in sculpture. There he excelled in the live model studio classes and the emphasis on the study of the human form. Although he is well known for his sculptures, he excelled in painting the human form as well.

V. S. Gaitonde: Abstract Drawing

V.S. Gaitonde grew up in Nagpur, Maharashtra, and studied at the J. J. School of Art. In 1947, he was invited to join the Progressive Artists’ Group and went on to become one of its original members. He worked with various mediums and used a roller and palette knives to create his own layered texture that became his signature style.

Prabhakar Kolte's Abstraction

Prabhakar Kolte was born in 1946 and received his diploma from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1968. Kolte’s technique involved weathering his stronger colors, adding touches of another color to the canvas. His works usually have a single color in the background on which lighter colors are placed.

Manu Parekh - An Important Portrait

Manu Parekh was born in 1939 in Gujarat. Parekh completed a Diploma in Drawing and Painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 1962. Parekh’s early work explored the relationships between man and nature, as he thought that it was an energetic link that had to be celebrated.

Shyamal Dutta Ray's Early Work

Shyamal Dutta Ray, born in 1935 in Bihar is known for his melancholic and dark watercolor works. Ray studied at the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Calcutta. He also founded the Society of Contemporary Artists, an artists' collective, that sought to introduce a new style into the Indian art world in the 1960s.

Maqbool Fida Husain - Taj Mahal

Maqbool Fida Husain was born in 1913 in Pandharpur, Maharashtra. In 1948, he was invited by F N Souza to join the Progressive Artists' Group in Mumbai. Husain began his career by painting billboards for feature films and making furniture designs and toys to earn a living.

Prabhakar Barwe: Cloud and Clock

Prabhakar Barwe studied art at Sir J. J. School of Art, Bombay. His fascination with the abstract form, drawn from the style and the concepts of Bauhaus, is reflected in his early watercolors and later works with floating motifs on a transparent surface.

Vivan Sundaram's Re-take of Amrita

Vivan Sundaram is the grandson of Umrao Singh Sher-Gil and nephew of Amrita Sher-Gil. His montages reinterpret photographs taken by his grandfather by showing the relationship between Amrita Sher-Gil and the people around her and is an exploration of Amrita’s life in India.

Somnath Hore Intaglio Etchings

Born in 1921 in Chittagong, undivided India, Somnath Hore studied at the Government Art College in Calcutta. His works represent the turbulent lives at the time of the Bengal Famine of 1943. His pictorial language in his sketches, sculptures, and prints is a reaction to one of the major crises’ that hit Bengal in the 20th century.

Somnath Hore Erotic Etchings

Somnath Hore’s art practice was western and academic in style. He was interested in humanist themes, and his works often involved the world of painting and printmaking with sculptural, textural prints that resonated with his feelings of anger and pain. His subject matter drew attention to the life of people in Bengal; the impoverished and suffering social class represented the pain caused by the Famine of 1943.

K.H. Ara: Still life with Flowers

Born in 1914, K. H. Ara, a founder member of the Progressive Artists’ Group, evolved his trademark style, through nudes and still-life paintings. He was a modernist for whom the form and language of art preceded all other social and political motivations. This evolved a certain eclecticism which led him in an exploration of his own style.

Francis N Souza Head- Ink on Paper

Francis Newton Souza was born in 1924 in Saligao, Goa. Souza was expelled for his behavior while studying at the Sir J J School of Art in Mumbai. In 1947, he founded the Progressive Artists' Group along with S H Raza, M F Husain, and K H Ara, among others. Souza's style created thought-provoking and powerful images.

Jamini Roy's 1930's Alpana on Cloth

Jamini Roy, who was inspired by folk traditions created an Alpana or a floral motif that was considered to be sacred painting in Bengal because it was done on special occasions. The alpana which is usually done with hands and rice paint on the floor was done with tempera on cloth instead.

Bimal Dasgupta Abstract Landscape

Bimal Dasgupta spent his childhood in Behrampur in Bengal. After completing his art education from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, and he embarked on a career as a landscape artist. Bimal Dasgupta’s paintings present variations on the theme of petals.

K S Kulkarni's Abstract Landscape

After a diploma in Fine Arts specializing in Murals in 1940 and a postgraduate course from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, KS Kulkarni went to Delhi in 1943 to study textile design. In 1945, he quit his job and joined the art department of the Delhi Polytechnic and became a member of Delhi’s All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society.

Ganesh Haloi's Transitive Abstraction

Ganesh Haloi, born in 1936 in Jamalpur (now in Bangladesh) moved to Calcutta after the partition. As a result, he had seen the country struggle for its freedom and its own identity. Haloi’s works are known for their composition of space, color, form, and narration.

B Prabha 1973 Landscape - Trees

Before moving to Bombay, B Prabha studied at the Nagpur School of Art. After moving, she went on to graduate from the Sir J. J. School of Art where she met her husband who was a fellow student. B Prabha made it in the art world at a time where there were very few women artists.

Krishen Khanna: Bandwala with Dog

On the canvas, Krishen Khanna's main concern has been with the human condition and its moral predicament. His approach to this came from a search for allegories that lent themselves to pictorial interpretation and irony. One of his most popular themes is the ‘bandwallahs’ whom Khanna encountered when he was driving out of the Garhi studios in New Delhi.

Biren De Tantric's Abstraction

Known for his Neo-Tantric paintings, Biren De molded an artistic career for himself across five decades, beginning as a portrait painter. The early works were figurative and strongly influenced by Post-Impressionist European painters.