The Modern Indian Art
Manifestos and the meaning of modern Indian art
Think about where art comes from.
Artists began writing manifestos about their aims. In 1963, J. Swaminathan led Group 1890 (with Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jyoti Bhatt, Ambadas, Jeram Patel, Raghav Kaneria, Himmat Shah). They wanted to be free of any ideology, and were interested in rough texture and surface.
In Europe, modern art rejected academic realism. After the Industrial Revolution, artists like Manet, Cézanne and Monet worked outside official institutions, and met in cafés. Souza and Swaminathan identified with them.
In India, modernism came while the country was still a colony. It was tied to nationalism and cultural nationalism (swadeshi in art, the ideas of Coomaraswamy), so it was a careful selection, not blind imitation.
Nandalal Bose and Asit Kumar Haldar drew on Ajanta and the miniatures. A distinctly modern attitude came with Gaganendranath, Rabindranath, Jamini Roy, Sher-Gil, Ramkinkar and Benode Behari.
Most subjects came from rural India, even for the Progressives and the Calcutta Group in the 1940s and 1950s. City life rarely appeared.
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