Modern Indian painting

movement late 19th century-present India

The modern Indian movement in painting is generally dated to late nineteenth-century Calcutta, where British-run art schools displaced older courtly traditions. Its first great figure, Raja Ravi Varma, adopted Western oil technique and the easel format to reinterpret Indian epic and mythological subjects with academic realism, and he is often called the first of the modernists. A reaction against this Westernization produced the Bengal School of Art, whose soft wash painting drew on Indian miniatures and East Asian brushwork to build a national aesthetic; the Santiniketan school followed with an idealized turn to rural life. In the twentieth century, painters such as Amrita Sher-Gil and the Progressive Artists' Group folded European modernist form into distinctly Indian subject matter, a synthesis that has defined the country's modern painting.

She looks back at her lover, pretending to remove a thorn from her foot.
She looks back at her lover, pretending to remove a thorn from her foot.Public domain (credit: Raja Ravi Varma) · source

Defining characteristics

  • European academic realism in Indian dress: oil paint, easel format, modeled light and perspective
  • Epic, mythological, and everyday Indian subjects rendered in a new naturalist idiom
  • Bengal School wash technique: soft, misty tonality and sinuous line drawn from Indian miniatures and East Asian ink
  • Muted, atmospheric color and flattened decorative space in revivalist works
  • Later modernists' bold color, simplified form, and social subject matter

Key figures

  • Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906) — Self-taught painter who fused European academic oil technique with Indian epic subjects; 'the first of the modernists'
  • Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) — Founder of the Bengal School of art, who turned to wash painting for a national aesthetic
  • Nandalal Bose (1882-1966) — Leading Bengal School painter and influential Santiniketan teacher
  • Amrita Sher-Gil (1913-1941) — Fused European modernist technique with a new subjective Indian imagery
  • M. F. Husain (1915-2011) — Co-founder of the Progressive Artists' Group and India's best-known modern painter

Example works

Sources

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