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Jamini Roy's Early Village Women

Jamini Roy's rejection of the Western academic style of painting led to him being inspired by Bengali folk paintings. Before he made the complete switch to the pat style paintings, he was depicting village life and folk. This work shows a personal reconstruction of another Indian reality that was often not seen in urban areas.

Francis Newton Souza's Goan Village

If one were to ask what Souza remained tethered to, it was the red soil of Goa, carried with him across continents. A man in perpetual motion, he inhabited many lands, yet Goa remained his anchor. His childhood in Saligao, characterized by Catholic traditions, village life, and vivid imagery, shaped his artistic sensibility from an early age.

Ram Kumar : Mazes of the Mind

Ram Kumar was an essential part of the first generation of postcolonial Indian artists. He was born in Shimla, Himachal Pradesh in 1924 and was a member of the Bombay Progressive Artists Group along with other popular artists like Husain, Raza, and Sadanand Bakre.

Steinway: Concert Grand Model D

Steinway & Sons was established in 1853 in Manhattan by a German piano builder named Heinrich Engelhard. Steinway has since become well known for producing and inventing new techniques ever since they started the business. Today, they are arguably one of the best piano manufacturers in the world.

The Course of the Empire Series

One of the United State’s first landscape artists, Thomas Cole, can be considered as the father of the Hudson River School. Cole romanticized the wilderness of upstate New York. To him, wilderness and nature were meant to be admired and respected. It was never meant to be controlled, tamed, and made civilized.

Sculptures : It’s All Greek to Me!

Alexander the Great can be said to be responsible for the Greek influence in Ancient India. He started to conquer kingdoms in the east and made it all the way to modern Pakistan and the Indian state of Gujarat. He turned back once he was defeated by King Porus in 326 BCE.

Expression of Pain : Somnath Hore

Somnath Hore was one of the most prominent political artists and activists of post-independence India. His affiliation with the Communist Party at an early age strongly influenced his artistic ideologies and methods of art practice. However, his career as a student of art and later as an art practitioner was unlike his contemporaries.

Sailoz Mukherjee : Oil Painting

Sailoz Mukherjee was one of the pioneering figures of modern Indian art in the twentieth century. During the early forties, when India was at the peak of its struggle to attain her own independence and identity, the art community of the country was striving to locate its indigenous understanding of modernity.

K.G. Subramanyan (1924-2016): An Overview

K.G. Subramanyan’s artistic oeuvre reflects the synthesized modernism in post-independence India, that was devised to accommodate the varied Indian artistic aesthetics and history as a continuation of cultural pursuits.

K.G. Subramanyan (1924-2016): An Overview

Jamini Roy

Life, Painting Style, and Most Famous Artworks To write in brief about the artist Jamini Roy - he was one of the most iconic figures of modern Indian art of the mid-20th century, Jamini Roy’s reputation spilled over from the art world into a larger public and popular domain, and even as his name became synonymous in modern Indian art history with a reinvented "Bengali folk" style.

Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal 1901 – 2003

B C Sanyal, as he was popularly known, was a doyen of modernism in Indian art.

Sunayani Devi (1875 – 1962): An Overview

Sunayani Devi was an Indian painter born into the aristocratic Tagore family in Calcutta, West Bengal in 1875. She was a self-taught artist with no academic training in art. Inspired by her brothers, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, and Samarendranath Tagore, she started painting only at the age of 3. She was married at the age of 11 to the grandson of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

Sunayani Devi (1875 – 1962): An Overview

Prodosh Dasgupta (1912-1991)

Prodosh Dasgupta was a crucial figure of that mid-20th century generation of artists in Bengal who were giving shape to a new vocabulary of modernism in Indian art. His role was particularly important in defining a distinct place for modernism in Indian sculpture, in advocating the concept of form as an independent identity in sculpture, and in pioneering a style of semi-abstract three-dimensional figuration.

Sankho Chowdhury (1916 – 2006)

Sankho Chowdhury was one of the formative influences in the changing horizon of modern Indian sculpture.

Art History 101: What is Modernism?

The Tate Modern states that Modernism refers to a global movement in society and culture that from the early decades of the twentieth century sought a new alignment with the experience and values of modern industrial life.

What is Abstract Expressionism?

New York City was home to the founders of abstract expressionism. These artists became known as the New York school as a result. They were inspired by the surrealist idea that art should come from the unconscious mind. Within abstract expressionism were two broad groupings: the action painters - who attacked their canvases with expressive brush strokes and and the colour field painters - who filled their canvases with large areas of a single colour.

Bimal Dasgupta(1917–95) Overview

Bimal Dasgupta (1917 – 1995) was one of the front runners of watercolor traditions in Indian art during the second half of the twentieth century. His of the medium expanded the possibilities of painting methods, beyond the components of academic realism that was instructed in art schools

Understanding Indian Sculpture

Sculptures are increasingly becoming popular investment grade collectables. In some modern South Asian art auctions at the end of 2018 Sadanand Bakre, Prodosh Dasgupta and Adi Davierwala sculptures were sold for record-breaking prices. To appreciate modern sculpture it is important to understand the origins of classical Indian sculpture.

Director's Note - PRINSEPS

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Art 101 : When Was Modernism?

It is generally acknowledged that modernism in European art begins with Cezanne and Picasso.