Snippets from light and landscape

HYDERABAD: It was the Bengal School of Art that rewrote and revolutionised the Indian art scene as an answer to the British style of art which had its own set patterns totally divorced from the sense and sensibilities of the Indian subcontinent. It was Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951), the nephew of poet Rabindranath Tagore, who shaped up the movement. Monalisa Behera, the curator, writes in the curatorial note: “Nicholas Roerich described Abanindranath as “A power beacon, as a guru of an entire school of art.” He transformed the post-Renaissance academic realism into which he was trained with his series of contacts with oriental art into something more supple and responsive to the imaginative flights of his mind. He arrived on the Indian art scene with the first wave of Indian nationalism, and was seen as a father figure of nationalist art and modernism.”

His brother Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) played an equally important part as he’s known among the earliest modern artists of India. And quite interestingly, a few Britishers at the time when Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj, a few Britishers came forward to support it. One among them was English historian and arts administrator Ernest Binfield Havell, whose role was instrumental in rejecting traditional western academic approaches in art. On the contrary, he supported and promoted Mughal miniatures encouraging students to seek inspiration from the same. He influenced Abanindranath much and took the movement forward blending Rajasthani, Pahari, and Mughal miniature styles of paintings.

Abanindranath’s pupil Nandalal Bose was instrumental in contributing to the art movement as he’s known to have painted the famous linocut print of Gandhi with a staff. Other than him Ganesh Pyne (1937 – 2013), Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940–2006), Jogen Chowdhury (b. 1939--), and others were contemporary Bengal School of Art painters. Their artistic expressions of Indian themes form a visual vocabulary celebrated even today. That’s how Kalakriti Art Gallery, Banjara Hills is celebrating the works of these noted artists through its exhibition titled ‘Woven in Time: Glimpses of Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Ganesh Pyne, and Jogen Chowdhury’. The paintings are from the collection of the gallery.

The exhibition offers glimpses into vignettes shifting between, colour fields, unbroken lines to contours of a figure, decay, and poetic distortions presenting not just the body of a landscape but also of the artists’ mental terrain. The exhibition explores through this show a diverse range of techniques and mediums. The works included in this exhibition will be on view to the public for the first time.

— Saima Afreen
 saima@newindianexpress 
 @Sfreen