National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

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Saturday, August 02, 2014

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Showcase - Artists Collectives

Calcutta Group
In 1943, erstwhile Calcutta bore the brunt of a terrible famine that ravaged Bengal. The famine, which killed millions, was said to have been triggered by the wrong policies of the ruling British Government. This unprecedented devastation steered several artists into looking a new at their visual language.

A group of young artists decided to reject the lyricism and the romanticism seen in the work of earlier Bengali artists. Six among them formed the Calcutta Group. The founder members were sculptors Pradosh Dasgupta, his wife Kamala, painters Gopal Ghosh, Nirode Majumdar, Paritosh Sen and Subho Tagore. Others like Pran Krishna Pal, Govardhan Ash and Bansi Chandragupta joined later.

This group of artists expressed the need for a visual language that could reflect the crisis of urban society. For the first time in modern Indian art, artists began to paint images that evoked anguish and trauma and reflected the urban situation. Rural scenes were no longer purely idyllic, and the formal treatment of the paintings began to reflect the influence of European modernism.

Progressive Artists Group, Bombay
By 1947, restless stirrings among the artists in Bombay led to the formation of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). The members who joined the group were Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, Syed Haider Raza, Krishna Hawlaji Ara, Hari Amba Das Gade and S. Bakre, a sculptor. Besides these founder members others too inclined with the group in their choice of aesthetic values and approach to visual language. Engagement with pure form became their creed. The artists close to the PAG were Akbar Padamsee, Tyeb Mehta, Bal Chhabda, Vasudeo S Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and Krishna Khanna. The NGMA has several paintings by most of these artists representing significant phases of their artistic development. Other artists of this period to have stretched the idioms were Narayan Shridhar Bendre and Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar.

Young Turks
Beside the Calcutta Group, there was another group called the Young Turks, among whom P. T. Reddy was the prominent member. The Young Turks encouraged by Charles Gerrard, principal of Sir J.J. School of Art held their first exhibition in 1941. Then there were Bhabesh Sanyal and Sailoz Mukherjee, who left Calcutta. The first went to Lahore and the second came to Delhi in search of employment. These artists find prominent place in the NGMA collection.