New figurative and narrative art

From the 1970s, after the 1971 war and the birth of Bangladesh, artists returned to recognisable figures and stories: K. G. Subramanyan, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh and Bhupen Khakhar in Baroda; Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Pyne in Bengal.

Printmakers Jyoti Bhatt (Devi), Laxma Goud and Anupam Sud (Of Walls) showed conflict and inequality. Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani and Sudhir Patwardhan looked at life in the big cities.

In the 1980s, Baroda artists mixed fact and fiction. Sheikh painted Baroda's bazaar while recalling medieval Siena. Khakhar painted ordinary people, like the barber and the watch repairer, and drew on the popular art of trucks and shop signs.

K. G. Subramanyan, a student of Shantiniketan, believed in public art: murals, and sand-cast reliefs, a technique he learned from Rajasthani craftsmen. His Fairy Tales from Purvapalli (1986) is a flat, sketchy, earthy imaginary world.

The 1981 exhibition 'Place for People' showed six artists, and the critic Geeta Kapur wrote about it: the role of the critic became important. Younger Mumbai painters used images from calendars, advertisements and photographs.