Rathin Maitra and Subho Tagore established the Calcutta Group, along with other founder members, which gained widespread recognition in India for its influential contribution to modern Indian painting much before the Progressives.
Rathin Maitra was the first in independent India to have been invited for an exhibition of his works at The Bombay Art Society, on 22nd September 1947; years before the first inaugural exhibition of the Progressive Artists' Group at the Bombay Art Society Salon in 1949. The show was opened by the Mayor of Bombay, Mr. A. P. Sabawalla, and it was functional from 23rd to 29th September 1947.
Also in charge of founding the Modern Art Society and the Society of Artists in Calcutta, he blended his iconography and thoughts with the new simplification approach by using free-flowing lines and vibrant colours.
Famine Circa 1940
Left / People's Rights Circa 1940
Bombay Solo Exhibition September 1947
Page from the Free Press Bulletin (23rd September, 1947) with report on his one man show in Bombay, held by the Bombay Art Society
A Masterpiece from 1982
.jpg)
Oil on Canvas 1982
Important References
- Sanjukta Sundaresan, Partisan Aesthetics: Indian Art and 20th-Century Decolonisation
- Anuradha Roy, Cultural Communism IN BENGAL 1936-1952
- Nicolas Nercam, The Encounter Between Asian and Western Art, 20th-21st Centuries
