NCERT Textbook - The Modern Indian Art | Fine Arts for Grade 12 PDF Download

 Page 1


7
The Modern Indian Art
Introduction to Modernism in India
F
ine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt 
that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to 
create and appreciate fine arts. By mid and late nineteenth 
century, art schools were established in major cities like 
Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and 
Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote 
traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art 
that reflected Victorian tastes. Even the Indian crafts, which 
received support, were the ones based on European taste 
and on the demands made by its market.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against 
this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, 
and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by 
Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was 
a prime example. India’s first nationalist art 
school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as 
part of the newly established Visva-Bharati 
University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by 
poet Rabindranath Tagore. It carried the vision 
of the Bengal School but also followed its own 
path in creating art meaningful for Indians. 
This was the time when the whole world was 
in a state of intense political turmoil in the 
wake of World War–I. Apart from the famous 
Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, 
as discussed in the previous chapter, modern 
European art influenced Indian artists through 
art magazines that were in circulation. Artists 
from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath 
and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew 
about the international trends of Cubism and 
Expressionism, which had rejected academic 
Gaganendranath Tagore, A 
Cubist City, 1925. Victoria 
Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   99 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 2


7
The Modern Indian Art
Introduction to Modernism in India
F
ine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt 
that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to 
create and appreciate fine arts. By mid and late nineteenth 
century, art schools were established in major cities like 
Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and 
Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote 
traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art 
that reflected Victorian tastes. Even the Indian crafts, which 
received support, were the ones based on European taste 
and on the demands made by its market.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against 
this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, 
and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by 
Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was 
a prime example. India’s first nationalist art 
school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as 
part of the newly established Visva-Bharati 
University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by 
poet Rabindranath Tagore. It carried the vision 
of the Bengal School but also followed its own 
path in creating art meaningful for Indians. 
This was the time when the whole world was 
in a state of intense political turmoil in the 
wake of World War–I. Apart from the famous 
Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, 
as discussed in the previous chapter, modern 
European art influenced Indian artists through 
art magazines that were in circulation. Artists 
from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath 
and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew 
about the international trends of Cubism and 
Expressionism, which had rejected academic 
Gaganendranath Tagore, A 
Cubist City, 1925. Victoria 
Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   99 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
100 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
realism and experimented with abstraction; 
They thought that art need not copy the world 
but create its own world out of forms, lines and 
colour patches. A landscape, portrait or still life 
may be called abstract if it draws our attention 
to an abstract design created by forms, lines 
and colour patches. 
Gaganendranath Tagore used the language 
of Cubism to create a unique style of his own. 
His paintings of mysterious halls and rooms 
were made with vertical, horizontal and 
diagonal lines, which were quite different from 
the Cubist style of famous artist Pablo Picasso, 
who invented the style using geometrical facets.
Rabindranath Tagore turned to visual 
art quite late in life. While writing poems, he 
would often make patterns out of doodles and 
developed a unique, calligraphic style out of 
crossed out words. Some of these were turned 
into human faces and landscapes, which floated captivatingly 
in his poems. His palette was limited with black, yellow 
ochre, reds and browns. However, Rabindranath created a 
small visual world that was a complete departure from the 
more elegant and delicate style of the Bengal School, which 
often drew inspiration from Mughal and Pahari miniatures 
along with Ajanta frescoes. 
Nandalal Bose in 1921–1922 joined the Kala Bhavana. 
His training under Abanindranath Tagore made him familiar 
with nationalism in art but it did not hinder him from allowing 
his students and other teachers to explore new avenues of 
artistic expression. 
Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Bose’s 
most creative students, gave a lot of thought as how to 
understand the world. They developed their own unique style 
of sketching and painting that could capture not only their 
immediate environment like flora and fauna but also those 
who lived there. Shantiniketan had a large population of 
Santhal tribe at its outskirts, and these artists often painted 
them and made sculptures based on them. Apart from this, 
themes from literary sources also interested them.
Rabindranath Tagore,
Doodle, 1920. Visva-Bharati 
University, Shantiniketan, 
West Bengal, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   100 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 3


7
The Modern Indian Art
Introduction to Modernism in India
F
ine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt 
that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to 
create and appreciate fine arts. By mid and late nineteenth 
century, art schools were established in major cities like 
Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and 
Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote 
traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art 
that reflected Victorian tastes. Even the Indian crafts, which 
received support, were the ones based on European taste 
and on the demands made by its market.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against 
this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, 
and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by 
Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was 
a prime example. India’s first nationalist art 
school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as 
part of the newly established Visva-Bharati 
University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by 
poet Rabindranath Tagore. It carried the vision 
of the Bengal School but also followed its own 
path in creating art meaningful for Indians. 
This was the time when the whole world was 
in a state of intense political turmoil in the 
wake of World War–I. Apart from the famous 
Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, 
as discussed in the previous chapter, modern 
European art influenced Indian artists through 
art magazines that were in circulation. Artists 
from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath 
and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew 
about the international trends of Cubism and 
Expressionism, which had rejected academic 
Gaganendranath Tagore, A 
Cubist City, 1925. Victoria 
Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   99 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
100 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
realism and experimented with abstraction; 
They thought that art need not copy the world 
but create its own world out of forms, lines and 
colour patches. A landscape, portrait or still life 
may be called abstract if it draws our attention 
to an abstract design created by forms, lines 
and colour patches. 
Gaganendranath Tagore used the language 
of Cubism to create a unique style of his own. 
His paintings of mysterious halls and rooms 
were made with vertical, horizontal and 
diagonal lines, which were quite different from 
the Cubist style of famous artist Pablo Picasso, 
who invented the style using geometrical facets.
Rabindranath Tagore turned to visual 
art quite late in life. While writing poems, he 
would often make patterns out of doodles and 
developed a unique, calligraphic style out of 
crossed out words. Some of these were turned 
into human faces and landscapes, which floated captivatingly 
in his poems. His palette was limited with black, yellow 
ochre, reds and browns. However, Rabindranath created a 
small visual world that was a complete departure from the 
more elegant and delicate style of the Bengal School, which 
often drew inspiration from Mughal and Pahari miniatures 
along with Ajanta frescoes. 
Nandalal Bose in 1921–1922 joined the Kala Bhavana. 
His training under Abanindranath Tagore made him familiar 
with nationalism in art but it did not hinder him from allowing 
his students and other teachers to explore new avenues of 
artistic expression. 
Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Bose’s 
most creative students, gave a lot of thought as how to 
understand the world. They developed their own unique style 
of sketching and painting that could capture not only their 
immediate environment like flora and fauna but also those 
who lived there. Shantiniketan had a large population of 
Santhal tribe at its outskirts, and these artists often painted 
them and made sculptures based on them. Apart from this, 
themes from literary sources also interested them.
Rabindranath Tagore,
Doodle, 1920. Visva-Bharati 
University, Shantiniketan, 
West Bengal, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   100 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
t he Modern IndIAn Art 101
Rather than making paintings around 
well-known epics like Ramayana and 
Mahabharata, Benode Behari Mukherjee was 
drawn to the lives of medieval saints. On the 
walls of Hindi Bhavana in Shantiniketan, he 
made a mural called Medieval Saints, in which 
he charts a history of medieval India through 
the lives of Tulsi Das, Kabir and others, and 
focuses on their humane teachings.
Ramkinkar Baij was an artist given to 
the celebration of nature. His art reflects his 
everyday experiences. Almost all his sculptures 
and paintings are created as response to his 
environment. For instance, his Santhal Family, 
made as an outdoor sculpture within the Kala 
Bhavana compound, turned the daily activity 
of a Santhal family setting out for work into a 
larger than a life size piece of art. Besides, it 
was made out of modern material like cement 
mixed with pebbles, held in shape with the 
help of metal armature. His style was in sharp 
contrast with works of earlier sculptor like D. 
P. Roy Choudhury, who had used academic 
realism to celebrate the labour of working classes, The 
Triumph of Labour.
If rural community was important for Benode Behari 
Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Jamini Roy, too, made 
his art relevant to this context. We had briefly discussed 
Roy in the last chapter as an artist, who rejected his own 
training received at the Government School of Art, Calcutta. 
Being a student of Abanindranath Tagore, he realised the 
futility of pursuing academic art. He noticed that the rural, 
folk art in Bengal had much in common with how modern 
European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee painted. After 
all, Picasso had arrived at Cubism by learning from the use 
of bold forms found in African masks. Roy, too, used simple 
and pure colours. Like village artists, he also made his own 
colours from vegetables and minerals. His art lent itself to 
easy reproduction by other members in his family, quite like 
the artisanal practice followed in villages. However, what 
differentiated his art from that of village artists was that 
Jamini Roy, Black Horse, 
1940. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   101 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 4


7
The Modern Indian Art
Introduction to Modernism in India
F
ine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt 
that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to 
create and appreciate fine arts. By mid and late nineteenth 
century, art schools were established in major cities like 
Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and 
Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote 
traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art 
that reflected Victorian tastes. Even the Indian crafts, which 
received support, were the ones based on European taste 
and on the demands made by its market.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against 
this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, 
and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by 
Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was 
a prime example. India’s first nationalist art 
school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as 
part of the newly established Visva-Bharati 
University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by 
poet Rabindranath Tagore. It carried the vision 
of the Bengal School but also followed its own 
path in creating art meaningful for Indians. 
This was the time when the whole world was 
in a state of intense political turmoil in the 
wake of World War–I. Apart from the famous 
Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, 
as discussed in the previous chapter, modern 
European art influenced Indian artists through 
art magazines that were in circulation. Artists 
from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath 
and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew 
about the international trends of Cubism and 
Expressionism, which had rejected academic 
Gaganendranath Tagore, A 
Cubist City, 1925. Victoria 
Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   99 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
100 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
realism and experimented with abstraction; 
They thought that art need not copy the world 
but create its own world out of forms, lines and 
colour patches. A landscape, portrait or still life 
may be called abstract if it draws our attention 
to an abstract design created by forms, lines 
and colour patches. 
Gaganendranath Tagore used the language 
of Cubism to create a unique style of his own. 
His paintings of mysterious halls and rooms 
were made with vertical, horizontal and 
diagonal lines, which were quite different from 
the Cubist style of famous artist Pablo Picasso, 
who invented the style using geometrical facets.
Rabindranath Tagore turned to visual 
art quite late in life. While writing poems, he 
would often make patterns out of doodles and 
developed a unique, calligraphic style out of 
crossed out words. Some of these were turned 
into human faces and landscapes, which floated captivatingly 
in his poems. His palette was limited with black, yellow 
ochre, reds and browns. However, Rabindranath created a 
small visual world that was a complete departure from the 
more elegant and delicate style of the Bengal School, which 
often drew inspiration from Mughal and Pahari miniatures 
along with Ajanta frescoes. 
Nandalal Bose in 1921–1922 joined the Kala Bhavana. 
His training under Abanindranath Tagore made him familiar 
with nationalism in art but it did not hinder him from allowing 
his students and other teachers to explore new avenues of 
artistic expression. 
Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Bose’s 
most creative students, gave a lot of thought as how to 
understand the world. They developed their own unique style 
of sketching and painting that could capture not only their 
immediate environment like flora and fauna but also those 
who lived there. Shantiniketan had a large population of 
Santhal tribe at its outskirts, and these artists often painted 
them and made sculptures based on them. Apart from this, 
themes from literary sources also interested them.
Rabindranath Tagore,
Doodle, 1920. Visva-Bharati 
University, Shantiniketan, 
West Bengal, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   100 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
t he Modern IndIAn Art 101
Rather than making paintings around 
well-known epics like Ramayana and 
Mahabharata, Benode Behari Mukherjee was 
drawn to the lives of medieval saints. On the 
walls of Hindi Bhavana in Shantiniketan, he 
made a mural called Medieval Saints, in which 
he charts a history of medieval India through 
the lives of Tulsi Das, Kabir and others, and 
focuses on their humane teachings.
Ramkinkar Baij was an artist given to 
the celebration of nature. His art reflects his 
everyday experiences. Almost all his sculptures 
and paintings are created as response to his 
environment. For instance, his Santhal Family, 
made as an outdoor sculpture within the Kala 
Bhavana compound, turned the daily activity 
of a Santhal family setting out for work into a 
larger than a life size piece of art. Besides, it 
was made out of modern material like cement 
mixed with pebbles, held in shape with the 
help of metal armature. His style was in sharp 
contrast with works of earlier sculptor like D. 
P. Roy Choudhury, who had used academic 
realism to celebrate the labour of working classes, The 
Triumph of Labour.
If rural community was important for Benode Behari 
Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Jamini Roy, too, made 
his art relevant to this context. We had briefly discussed 
Roy in the last chapter as an artist, who rejected his own 
training received at the Government School of Art, Calcutta. 
Being a student of Abanindranath Tagore, he realised the 
futility of pursuing academic art. He noticed that the rural, 
folk art in Bengal had much in common with how modern 
European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee painted. After 
all, Picasso had arrived at Cubism by learning from the use 
of bold forms found in African masks. Roy, too, used simple 
and pure colours. Like village artists, he also made his own 
colours from vegetables and minerals. His art lent itself to 
easy reproduction by other members in his family, quite like 
the artisanal practice followed in villages. However, what 
differentiated his art from that of village artists was that 
Jamini Roy, Black Horse, 
1940. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   101 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
102 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
Roy signed on his paintings. His style is seen as uniquely 
personal, distinct from both the academic naturalism of art 
schools and from Raja Ravi Varma’s Indianised naturalism, 
as well as, from the delicate style practised by some of the 
Bengal School artists. 
Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), half Hungarian and half 
Indian, emerges as a unique female artist, who contributed 
immensely to modern Indian art through the 1930s. Unlike 
others, she was trained in Paris and had a first-hand 
experience in European modern art trends, such as 
Impressionism and post–Impressionism. After deciding to 
make India her base, she worked to develop art with Indian 
themes and images. Amrita Sher-Gil assimilated miniature 
and mural traditions of Indian art with European modernism. 
She died young, leaving behind a remarkable body of work, 
which is important for its experimental spirit and the impact 
it left on the next generation of Indian modernists.
Modern Ideologies and Political Art in India
Soon after Sher-Gil’s death, India, still under British rule, 
was deeply affected by global events like World War–II. One 
of the indirect outcomes was the outbreak of the Bengal 
famine, which ravaged the region forcing massive rural 
migration to cities.
The humanitarian crisis compelled many 
artists to reflect on their role in society. In 1943, 
under the leadership of Prodosh Das Gupta, a 
sculptor, few young artists formed the Calcutta 
Group, which included Nirode Mazumdar, 
Paritosh Sen, Gopal Ghose and Rathin Moitra. 
The group believed in an art that was universal 
in character and free from older values. They 
did not like the Bengal School of Art as it 
was too sentimental and deeply interested 
in the past. They wanted their paintings and 
sculptures to speak of their own times. 
They started to simplify their visual 
expression by excluding details. With such an 
attempt, they could emphasise on elements, 
material, surface, forms, colours, shades 
and textures, etc. A comparison may be 
Prodosh Das Gupta,  
Twins Bronze,
1973. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   102 08 Sep 2020   02:53:15 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
Page 5


7
The Modern Indian Art
Introduction to Modernism in India
F
ine arts was seen as European by the British. They felt 
that Indians lacked training and sensibility to be able to 
create and appreciate fine arts. By mid and late nineteenth 
century, art schools were established in major cities like 
Lahore, Calcutta (now, Kolkata), Bombay (now, Mumbai) and 
Madras (now, Chennai). These art schools tended to promote 
traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art 
that reflected Victorian tastes. Even the Indian crafts, which 
received support, were the ones based on European taste 
and on the demands made by its market.
As mentioned in the previous chapter, it was against 
this colonial bias that nationalist art emerged, 
and the Bengal School of Art, as nurtured by 
Abanindranath Tagore and E. B. Havell, was 
a prime example. India’s first nationalist art 
school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as 
part of the newly established Visva-Bharati 
University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by 
poet Rabindranath Tagore. It carried the vision 
of the Bengal School but also followed its own 
path in creating art meaningful for Indians. 
This was the time when the whole world was 
in a state of intense political turmoil in the 
wake of World War–I. Apart from the famous 
Bauhaus exhibition that travelled to Calcutta, 
as discussed in the previous chapter, modern 
European art influenced Indian artists through 
art magazines that were in circulation. Artists 
from the Tagore family — Gaganendranath 
and poet–painter Rabindranath, thus, knew 
about the international trends of Cubism and 
Expressionism, which had rejected academic 
Gaganendranath Tagore, A 
Cubist City, 1925. Victoria 
Memorial Hall, Kolkata, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   99 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
100 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
realism and experimented with abstraction; 
They thought that art need not copy the world 
but create its own world out of forms, lines and 
colour patches. A landscape, portrait or still life 
may be called abstract if it draws our attention 
to an abstract design created by forms, lines 
and colour patches. 
Gaganendranath Tagore used the language 
of Cubism to create a unique style of his own. 
His paintings of mysterious halls and rooms 
were made with vertical, horizontal and 
diagonal lines, which were quite different from 
the Cubist style of famous artist Pablo Picasso, 
who invented the style using geometrical facets.
Rabindranath Tagore turned to visual 
art quite late in life. While writing poems, he 
would often make patterns out of doodles and 
developed a unique, calligraphic style out of 
crossed out words. Some of these were turned 
into human faces and landscapes, which floated captivatingly 
in his poems. His palette was limited with black, yellow 
ochre, reds and browns. However, Rabindranath created a 
small visual world that was a complete departure from the 
more elegant and delicate style of the Bengal School, which 
often drew inspiration from Mughal and Pahari miniatures 
along with Ajanta frescoes. 
Nandalal Bose in 1921–1922 joined the Kala Bhavana. 
His training under Abanindranath Tagore made him familiar 
with nationalism in art but it did not hinder him from allowing 
his students and other teachers to explore new avenues of 
artistic expression. 
Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Bose’s 
most creative students, gave a lot of thought as how to 
understand the world. They developed their own unique style 
of sketching and painting that could capture not only their 
immediate environment like flora and fauna but also those 
who lived there. Shantiniketan had a large population of 
Santhal tribe at its outskirts, and these artists often painted 
them and made sculptures based on them. Apart from this, 
themes from literary sources also interested them.
Rabindranath Tagore,
Doodle, 1920. Visva-Bharati 
University, Shantiniketan, 
West Bengal, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   100 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
t he Modern IndIAn Art 101
Rather than making paintings around 
well-known epics like Ramayana and 
Mahabharata, Benode Behari Mukherjee was 
drawn to the lives of medieval saints. On the 
walls of Hindi Bhavana in Shantiniketan, he 
made a mural called Medieval Saints, in which 
he charts a history of medieval India through 
the lives of Tulsi Das, Kabir and others, and 
focuses on their humane teachings.
Ramkinkar Baij was an artist given to 
the celebration of nature. His art reflects his 
everyday experiences. Almost all his sculptures 
and paintings are created as response to his 
environment. For instance, his Santhal Family, 
made as an outdoor sculpture within the Kala 
Bhavana compound, turned the daily activity 
of a Santhal family setting out for work into a 
larger than a life size piece of art. Besides, it 
was made out of modern material like cement 
mixed with pebbles, held in shape with the 
help of metal armature. His style was in sharp 
contrast with works of earlier sculptor like D. 
P. Roy Choudhury, who had used academic 
realism to celebrate the labour of working classes, The 
Triumph of Labour.
If rural community was important for Benode Behari 
Mukherjee and Ramkinker Baij, Jamini Roy, too, made 
his art relevant to this context. We had briefly discussed 
Roy in the last chapter as an artist, who rejected his own 
training received at the Government School of Art, Calcutta. 
Being a student of Abanindranath Tagore, he realised the 
futility of pursuing academic art. He noticed that the rural, 
folk art in Bengal had much in common with how modern 
European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee painted. After 
all, Picasso had arrived at Cubism by learning from the use 
of bold forms found in African masks. Roy, too, used simple 
and pure colours. Like village artists, he also made his own 
colours from vegetables and minerals. His art lent itself to 
easy reproduction by other members in his family, quite like 
the artisanal practice followed in villages. However, what 
differentiated his art from that of village artists was that 
Jamini Roy, Black Horse, 
1940. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   101 01 Sep 2020   03:26:04 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
102 An IntroductIon to IndIAn Art —PArt II
Roy signed on his paintings. His style is seen as uniquely 
personal, distinct from both the academic naturalism of art 
schools and from Raja Ravi Varma’s Indianised naturalism, 
as well as, from the delicate style practised by some of the 
Bengal School artists. 
Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), half Hungarian and half 
Indian, emerges as a unique female artist, who contributed 
immensely to modern Indian art through the 1930s. Unlike 
others, she was trained in Paris and had a first-hand 
experience in European modern art trends, such as 
Impressionism and post–Impressionism. After deciding to 
make India her base, she worked to develop art with Indian 
themes and images. Amrita Sher-Gil assimilated miniature 
and mural traditions of Indian art with European modernism. 
She died young, leaving behind a remarkable body of work, 
which is important for its experimental spirit and the impact 
it left on the next generation of Indian modernists.
Modern Ideologies and Political Art in India
Soon after Sher-Gil’s death, India, still under British rule, 
was deeply affected by global events like World War–II. One 
of the indirect outcomes was the outbreak of the Bengal 
famine, which ravaged the region forcing massive rural 
migration to cities.
The humanitarian crisis compelled many 
artists to reflect on their role in society. In 1943, 
under the leadership of Prodosh Das Gupta, a 
sculptor, few young artists formed the Calcutta 
Group, which included Nirode Mazumdar, 
Paritosh Sen, Gopal Ghose and Rathin Moitra. 
The group believed in an art that was universal 
in character and free from older values. They 
did not like the Bengal School of Art as it 
was too sentimental and deeply interested 
in the past. They wanted their paintings and 
sculptures to speak of their own times. 
They started to simplify their visual 
expression by excluding details. With such an 
attempt, they could emphasise on elements, 
material, surface, forms, colours, shades 
and textures, etc. A comparison may be 
Prodosh Das Gupta,  
Twins Bronze,
1973. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   102 08 Sep 2020   02:53:15 PM
Rationalised 2023-24
t he Modern IndIAn Art 103
drawn against a sculptor from South India,  
P. V. Janakiram (Ganesh) who worked with 
metal sheets in a creative way. 
Seeing abject poverty around them and 
the plight of people in villages and cities, 
many young artists in Calcutta were drawn to 
socialism, especially Marxism. This modern 
philosophy, which was taught by Karl Marx in 
the mid–nineteenth century in the West, asked 
important questions about class difference 
in society and appealed to these artists. They 
wanted their art to talk about these social 
problems. Chittoprasad and Somnath Hore,  
the two political artists of India, found 
printmaking to be a strong medium to express these social 
concerns. With printmaking, it is easier to produce multiple 
number of artworks and reach out to more number of people. 
Chittoprasad’s etchings, linocuts and lithographs showed 
the deplorable condition of the poor. It is not surprising that 
he was asked by the Communist Party of India to travel to 
villages worst affected by the Bengal Famine 
and make sketches. These were later published 
as pamphlets under the name, Hungry Bengal, 
much to the annoyance of the British.
The Progressive Artists’ Group of Bombay and 
the Multifaceted Indian Art
The desire for freedom — political, as well as, 
artistic — soon spread widely among young 
artists, who witnessed Independence from the 
British Raj. In Bombay, another set of artists 
formed a group, called The Progressives in 
1946. Francis Newton Souza was the outspoken  
leader of the group, which included M. F. 
Husain, K. H. Ara, S. A. Bakre, H. A. Gade and  
S. H. Raza. Souza wanted to question the 
conventions that had prevailed in art schools. 
For him, modern art stood for a new freedom 
that could challenge the traditional sense of 
beauty and morality. However, his experimental 
works were focused mainly on women, whom 
Chittoprasad, Hungry Bengal,
1943. Delhi Art Gallery,
New Delhi, India
M. F. Husain,
Farmer’s Family,
1940. NGMA, New Delhi, India
1_7.Modern Art Painting.indd   103 01 Sep 2020   03:26:05 PM
Rationalised 2023-24