LIVING

Want to see some stimulating art? Here’s our curated guide for you

By Shaikh Ayaz
05 May, 2022

From SH Raza's iconic bindu to Manjit Bawa's exquisite drawings, a roundup of five art shows across India to mark on your calendars this May

The weekend of the India Art Fair held in New Delhi may have just ended but the art fever is far from over yet. For art lovers, there are plenty of unmissable exhibitions on display through May.

It seems like a significant month, especially for the Indian modernists, who are largely in the limelight and have managed to maintain their impressive ascent over the decades, in terms of both public engagement and sales. If you are in New Delhi, your first stop should be Vadehra Art Gallery where an ongoing show of Manjit Bawa's drawings paints the portrait of an artist who saw sketching as fundamental to his practice. Next, head to the unforgettable Sayed Haider Raza experience at Bikaner House. For Mumbaikars, there's a line-up of modernists (KK Hebbar and Rasik Raval among others) at Akara Art gallery. Those in Kolkata can check out the exciting Adip Dutta-curated exhibition Between the Self and Silhouettes that brings together the husband-wife duo of Soma Das and Anjan Modak for a double bill—it's a nod to the role of the artist as ethnographer. Diverse in tone, scale and vision, these shows promise to offer viewers a fresh interpretation on Indian modern art.

Manjit Bawa, Untitled (A self portrait of the late artist)

Manjit Bawa, Untitled

Kala Bagh

Pages from an artist's sketchbook can reveal a restless, creative mind at work. It is the mainspring from which masterpieces are born. Manjit Bawa's (1941-2008) Kala Bagh at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, brings together a set of drawings that were carefully retrieved from his studio. "It brings forward the exploration of forms by Bapu through the years," says his daughter Bhavna Bawa. Kala Bagh was the great Indian modernist's long-cherished dream that unfortunately remained unfinished as the artist slipped into a coma in 2005. In Bawa's suite of 33 drawings, viewers can find constantly enchanting motifs of cows, tigers, mythological figures and even his pet Chandni. Kala Bagh's two main panels, however, focus on Lord Shiva. Bhavna explains, "If you observe the two canvases, Lord Shiva is in a playful mood in the first one while in the other, he's more meditative. I wonder if Bapu, too, had been struggling with both energies—his adorable childlike quality and the need to move inwards. Whether he was trying to explore the duality of life or transition from one to another, one would never know."

At Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; until 18 June

A portrait of SH Raza at Bikaner House

SH Raza, Bindu-Naad

Traversing Space: Here and Beyond

Galleries and institutions across India have celebrated Sayed Haider Raza's centenary with special exhibitions this year. The commemoration continues at the Bikaner House, New Delhi, in a splendid show by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (in collaboration with the Raza Foundation). In its review, the Instagram art chronicler Indian Art Feed wrote, "What a joy to witness so many rare and iconic works by S H Raza in one place." Curated by Roobina Karode, Traversing Space: Here and Beyond pays homage to the art and life of the artist who died in 2016, aged 94, leaving behind an unmatched legacy. The landmark Bindu-Naad is one of the highlights of the show, alongside other key paintings such as Germination and La Terre. "Bindu-Naad is a work that brings together three important aspects of Raza’s symbolic or mystical abstractions—repetition, rhythm and reverberation. Drawing upon Upanishadic abstract profound thought, Naad is the sound heard in the ear during deep meditation. It reiterates how Raza was drawn to the infinite power and presence of the Bindu as the point of origin and return, as the cosmos begins out of a dot/seed/bindu and dissolves into it. The immense scale of the tripartite work draws you inside the shunya," says Karode.

At Bikaner House, New Delhi; until 30 June

Sohan Qadri, Invocation

K.C.S Paniker, Words & Symbols

Tantra On the Edge: Inspirations and Experiments in Twentieth-Century Indian Art

Tantra art, according to Tantra On the Edge curator Madhu Khanna, is a living relic of the past. "It may have faded in or out of our memory," she notes, "but it survives in the collective memory of a whole generation of artists, scholars, collectors, and truth-seekers in the East and West. It has no fixed definition, no fixed scriptural canon, and unlike Buddhist and Jain traditions, no prophet or founder." Yet, there are some pathbreakers loosely associated with this philosophy. These include KCS Paniker, J Swaminathan, Sohan Qadri and Prabhakar Barwe among others. Hosted by DAG (formerly Delhi Art Gallery), Tantra On the Edge consists of several abstract works by Barwe, which address "the metaphysical significance of object, space, form, colour, symbols, and signs. The interplay of real and illusionary and the visible-invisible." Swaminathan, too, had dedicated himself to tribal folk art and tantric motifs. Unlike his contemporaries who were taking their cues from European modernism, Swaminathan remained focussed on the Indian aesthetics, as evident in his distinctively homegrown art.

At DAG, The Claridges, New Delhi; until 27 June

Anjan Modak, Life Under the Yellow Eye I, (2021)

Soma Das, Enjoyment in Confined Life II, (2020)

Between the Self and Silhouettes

The works of Anjan Modak and Soma Das are defined by profound empathy and feeling for the common people who go about their lives with graceful ordinariness. Artist Adip Dutta, who has curated their dual show Between the Self and Silhouettes at Emami Art, Kolkata, aptly describes them as "ethnographers." As a professor at the Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata, Dutta has known the two artists—who were students in the department of painting— for close to a decade. "Both have a keen sense of observation. Their art is a strong response to the spaces they inhabit. They have relentlessly looked at people, the inhabitants and characters around them and recorded them, with a simultaneous sense of attachment and detachment. I feel the act of looking gradually becomes an exploration of the self. Hence, the title." On the other hand, Soma's works focus on middle-aged women, captured in various stages of their daily lives. "Having studied her mother doing domestic chores, she uses the female figures almost like a motif. The drudgery of everyday life assumes a mythic proportion in her art."

At Emami Art, Kolkata; until 4 June

Rasik Raval, Untitled, Acrylic on Board, 20.75 x 48inches, Circa 1950

K K Hebbar, Untitled, Oil on Canvas Board, 9 x 11.75 inches, 1966

When Attitude Takes Form

At Mumbai's Akara Art, there's an enormous Rasik Raval painting whose subject (pretty much like Soma Das' female protagonists) is as uncannily ordinary as its execution is extraordinary—a group of women dutifully going about their daily chores. One of the lesser-known Indian artists (1928-1980) whose folk-infused offerings are distinguished by linear forms, Raval's untitled acrylic-on-board is "probably his largest from this period as opposed to the single characters that usually populated his imagination," says Puneet Shah, founder, Akara Art. When Attitude Takes Form also includes the works of popular names like KK Hebbar, KG Subramanyan and AA Raiba among others. “The Hebbar work is unique," Shah insists. "In such a small work he manages to marry the vast expanse of the landscape with figures in the foreground." Like with Hebbar, adds Shah, most works on display are a stark departure from the exhibiting artists' typical style.

At Akara Art, Mumbai; until 14 May

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