The Modern Indian Art
The Progressives and abstraction
Understand figurative and abstract art.
The Progressive Artists' Group formed in Bombay in 1946, led by F. N. Souza, with M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. A. Bakre, H. A. Gade and S. H. Raza. Souza challenged the rules of the art schools and old ideas of beauty.
Husain joined expressionist brushwork with bright Indian colours, mythology, miniatures and folk toys. His Mother Teresa echoes Michelangelo's Pieta, in flat, collage-like shapes.
Abstraction does not copy what the eye sees; it expresses ideas and feelings through shape, colour and symbol. Raza moved to abstraction: from landscapes to the mandala, the yantra and the bindu (the dot, a symbol of oneness). Gaitonde too became abstract; Hebbar, Chavda, Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta and Krishen Khanna moved between abstract and figurative work. Krishna Reddy's print Whirlpool (1963) used viscosity printing, developed at Atelier 17 in Paris.
In the 1960s, Biren De, G. R. Santosh and K. C. S. Paniker made a uniquely Indian abstraction from yantras and scripts, called Neo-Tantric art. Paniker founded the Cholamandalam artists' village near Madras.
Sculptors Amarnath Sehgal (thin, wiry figures, as in Cries Unheard) and Mrinalini Mukherjee (working in hemp fibre) balanced abstraction and the figure.
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