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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.

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.

Jamini Roy's : Sculpture Sketch

Jamini Roy’s inspiration for folk art led him to experiment with sculpture along with paintings and sketches even though he had no formal sculpture training. This artwork depicts a preparatory sketch of three sculptures similar to crude dolls from folk art.

Francis N Souza's Noel Chemical

Francis Newton Souza was one of modern India’s leaders of art and is known for his organic and complex growth in his works. In 1976, Souza migrated to New York and redefined his style of art.

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

Born in 1924, Souza is best known for being one of the founding members of the Progressive Artists Group. Francis Newton Souza’s ‘Goan Village’ is an early masterpiece of the Goa-born artist.

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.

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.

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.