Modern Indian painting
A reaction to the Western influence led to a revival in primitivism, called as the Bengal school of art, which drew from the rich cultural heritage of India.
A distinct genre developed of watercolour painting on paper and mica in the later half of the 18th century depicting scenes of everyday life, regalia of princely courts, and native festivities and rituals.
[2][4] The enlightened eighteenth-century attitude shown by an earlier generation of British towards Indian history, monuments, literature, culture and art took a turn away in the mid-nineteenth century.
[7] He is considered the first of the modernists, and, along with Amrita Sher-gil (1913–1941), the main exponents of Western techniques to develop a new aesthetic in the subjective interpretation of Indian culture with "the promise of materiality in the medium of oils and the reality-paradigm of the mirror/window format of easel painting".
[2] Some other prominent Indian painters born in the 19th century are Pestonjee Bomanjee (1851–1938), Mahadev Vishwanath Dhurandhar (1867–1944), A X Trindade (1870–1935),[8] M F Pithawalla (1872–1937),[9] Sawlaram Lakshman Haldankar (1882–1968) and Hemen Majumdar (1894–1948).
The work of Varma was considered to be among the best examples of the fusion of Indian traditions with the techniques of European academic art, in the colonial-nationalistic framework of the 19th century.
Varma purchased a printing press which churned out oleograph copies of his paintings which graced the middle-class homes of India, many decades after he died.
[2] Considered a genius in his heyday, within a few years of his passing, Varma's paintings came under severe strictures for mimicking Western art.
Some artists developed a style that used Western ideas of composition, perspective and realism to illustrate Indian themes, Raja Ravi Varma being prominent among them.
[6] This caused immense controversy, leading to a strike by students and complaints from the local press, including from nationalists who considered it to be a retrogressive move.
[6] Abanindranath painted a number of works influenced by Mughal art, a style that he and Havel believed to be expressive of India's distinct spiritual qualities, as opposed to the "materialism" of the West.
During the opening years of the 20th century, Abanindranath developed links with Japanese cultural figures such as the art historian Okakura Kakuzō and the painter Yokoyama Taikan as part of a globalised Modernist initiative with pan-Asian tendencies.
The Bengal school's influence on Indian art scene gradually started alleviating with the spread of modernist ideas post-independence.
[6] It established an Indian version of naturalism distinct from the oriental and western schools, one example being the eschewing of oil and easel painting for work on paper drawn/coloured using watercolours, wash, tempera and ink.
[2] Rabindranath Tagore's dream of veneration of old values, typified by motifs such as rural folk, especially Santhal tribals, came to fruition in the art-related schools of Viswa-Bharati University at Santiniketan.
[2] Some of the prominent artists of Santiniketan school are Benode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinkar Baij, Manu Parekh, Sankho Chaudhuri, Dinkar Kaushik, K. G. Subramanyan, Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, Krishna Reddy, A. Ramachandran, Sobha Brahma, Ramananda Bandhapadhyay, Dharma Narayan Dasgupta, Sushen Ghose, Janak Jhankar Narzary .
Those European modernities, projected through a triumphant British colonial power, provoked nationalist responses, equally problematic when they incorporated similar essentialisms.
The practice of subsuming Nandalal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Ram Kinker Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee under the Bengal School of Art was, according to Siva Kumar, misleading.
Prominent among them were Akbar Padamsee, Sadanand Bakre, Ram Kumar, Tyeb Mehta, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade and Bal Chabda.
Other famous painters like Narayan Shridhar Bendre, K.K.Hebbar, K. C. S. Paniker, Sankho Chaudhuri, Antonio Piedade da Cruz,[19][20] K. G. Subramanyan, Beohar Rammanohar Sinha, Satish Gujral, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Jehangir Sabavala, Sakti Burman, A. Ramachandran, Ganesh Pyne, Nirode Mazumdar, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, Laxman Pai, A.
A. Raiba, Jahar Dasgupta, Prokash Karmakar, John Wilkins, Vivan Sundaram, Jogen Chowdhury, Jagdish Swaminathan, Jyoti Bhatt, Bhupen Khakhar, Jeram Patel, Narayanan Ramachandran, Paramjit Singh, Pranab Barua, Dom Martin (the Surrealistic Painter from Goa) and Bijon Choudhuri enriched the art culture of India and they have become the icons of modern Indian art.
Women artists like B. Prabha, Shanu Lahiri, Arpita Singh, Srimati Lal, Anjolie Ela Menon and Lalita Lajmi have made immense contributions to Modern Indian Art and Painting.
Art historians like Prof. Rai Anand Krishna have also referred to those works of modern artistes that reflect Indian ethos.
[24] One such artist that has had great influence is Bhupen Khakhar, and his style included, “producing colorful works with much humor, driven by strong narratives capturing a mixture of daily middle-class life and erotic fantasy."
Subramanyan was able to take those teachings from Tagore and bring them to the future generation of artists whilst he himself was a teacher at Maharaja Sayajiaro University in Baroda.
[27] Siddharth (Sid) Katragadda is an Indian-American artist who received his diploma in Painting Composition from the City College, San Diego.
All of his paintings capture the change that he has gone through during his life; they represent the feelings that he has inside, yet his artwork seems to envision some sort of fantasy, even including some western figures like Superman.
He uses vibrant colors to show his love for nature and stays true to his roots by recreating some of the most traditional Indian art [32] The year of 2019, Buddhadev Mukherjee from Kolkata, India, started to be recognized for his unusual interest in separating human form from all other things.
