Pan-Asianism and modernism

After the Partition of Bengal in 1905, the Swadeshi movement was at its height. Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote about Swadeshi in art, and joined the Japanese nationalist Kakuzo Okakura, whose idea of pan-Asianism sought to unite Asian nations against western imperialism.

Two Japanese artists taught the wash technique at Shantiniketan, as an alternative to oil painting.

In 1922, an exhibition of Bauhaus artists from Germany (Paul Klee, Kandinsky) came to Calcutta. Their abstract squares, circles, lines and patches of colour were Indians' first direct meeting with such modern art.

Gaganendranath Tagore used Cubism: his City in the Night (1922) has diamond-shaped planes, prismatic colours and stage lighting. He also drew caricatures of westernised Bengalis.

The divide between 'western' and 'Indian' art was not about race. The Indian Benoy Sarkar praised European modernism, in 'The Futurism of Young Asia', and called the Bengal School backward; while the Englishman Havell backed native art. Amrita Sher-Gil joined both views. Modern Indian art moves between the international and the indigenous.