- Aurangzeb's Mosque by Thomas Daniell
- Woman Holding a Fruit by Raja Ravi Varma
- Portrait of a Lady by Raja Ravi Varma
- Sleep , 1933, Amrita Sher-Gil
- Face of a woman, by Rabindranath Tagore
- My Mother by Abanindranath Tagore
![]() | This article contains close paraphrasing of a non-free copyrighted source, http://ngmaindia.gov.in/past-exhibits.asp ( Copyvios report ).(October 2019) |
![]() The Jaipur House | |
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Established | 29 March 1954 |
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Location | Jaipur House, Rajpath, New Delhi |
Coordinates | 28°36′36.66″N77°14′3.84″E / 28.6101833°N 77.2344000°E |
Type | modern art museum |
Website | ngmaindia |
The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) is the premier art gallery under Ministry of Culture, Government of India. [1] The main museum at Jaipur House in New Delhi was established on 29 March 1954 by the Government of India, with subsequent branches at Mumbai and Bangalore. Its collection of more than 17,000 works by 2000 plus artists [2] includes artists such as Thomas Daniell, Raja Ravi Verma, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil as well as foreign artists. Some of the oldest works preserved here date back to 1857. [1] With 12,000 square meters of exhibition space, [3] the Delhi branch is one of the world's largest modern art museums.
The first proposal for a National Art Gallery was made by a Delhi-based artists’ organisation, the AIFACS, in 1938. [4] [ page needed ] This institution, initially registered as Delhi Fine Arts Society in 1929, was founded by artist–brothers Barada and Sarada Ukil who were students of Abanindranath Tagore. [note 1] In 1946, the Society organised the First International Contemporary Art Exhibition that included paintings of modern French and English artists, as well as etchings from American artists. The exhibition coincided with the first All India conference, where a resolution appointing AIFACS as a central art body was passed. [4] In subsequent years, however, AIFACS’ claims were diluted by the factions that arose among the artists, with the newly set up All India Association of Fine Arts, Bombay, putting forth its own agency as a central organisation at the Third All India Art conference in 1948.In 1949 Art Conference at Calcutta The government invited a consortium of artists and critics for this conference on visual arts — Stella Kramrisch, G. Venkatachalam, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, O. C. Ganguly, Atul Bose, James H. Cousins and Percy Brown, among others — and asked for their suggestions on art institutions like the National Museum and the National Gallery of Art, and the educative role of art for the general public. On the issue of the Gallery, the participants at the seminar reacted in different ways. Some such as historian Dr Nihar Ranjan Ray encouraged the government to step in and set up the representative advisory body, while others like artist and founder member of the group in Delhi, Silpi Chakra, B. C. Sanyal, argued that it was wrong for the government to take the initiative away from the artists’ hands. It passed a resolution for the early establishment of the National Art Gallery and the improvement of the National Museum, as well as the formation of the three Akademis as part of a Sub Commission for Culture of the Indian National Commission for Cooperation with UNESCO. [4]
In 1953 the Society organised the Second International Exhibition of Contemporary Art in its new building, which the national daily 'The Statesman' described as ‘no less than Venice Beinnale’. [5] Though the idea of the National Gallery was floated in 1949, the state-supported NGMA was formally inaugurated by Vice-president Dr S.Radhakrishnan in 1954, in the presence of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Hermann Goetz (1898–1976), [6] a noted German art historian became its first curator and in time it added new facilities such as Art restoration services, an Art reference Library and a Documentation Centre. [7] The Gallery opened with an exhibition of contemporary sculpture, apart from showcasing its initial collection of around 200 works, which consisted of paintings by Amrita Sher Gill, Rabindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose, and M. A. R. Chugtai, among others.
Situated at the end of Rajpath, in the Central Hexagon around the India Gate, the building was a former residential palace of the Maharaja of Jaipur, hence known as Jaipur House. The butterfly-shaped building with a central dome and built in 1936, and designed by Sir Arthur Blomfield, after the construction of Lutyens' Delhi. The Central Hexagon around the India Gate, where the buildings of leading princely states were situated, was itself designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. [1]
The gallery at Jaipur House opened with an exhibition of Indian sculptures, showcasing myriad of 65 Indian sculptures, displayed in five rooms of the Jaipur House, by 31 artists like Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury, Ram Kinkar Baij, Sankho Chaudhuri, Dhanraj Bhagat and Sarbari Roy Chowdhury. This event was even curated by Hermann Goetz. The startup aim of the museum was the acquisition and preservation of art works from 1850 to till date, mainly paintings, sculptures and graphics and later also photographs.
Then in 2009, a new wing of the National Gallery of Modern Art was inaugurated adding almost six times the space to the existing gallery, plus it has a new auditorium, a preview theatre, conservation laboratory, library and academic section as well as a cafeteria and museum shop. [1] [8]
Shri Adwaita Gadanayak : December 2016 - December 2022.
Dr. Sanjeev Kishor Goutam: December 2023 to present Date.
The comprehensive collection of NGMA and its regional centers comprise around 17,000 art objects - paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and installations, essentially by Indian artists, built over the years through gifts, purchases, and permanent loans, it currently represents the works of about 2000 artists from India and abroad, and as in all dynamic institutions, the collection would continue to grow meaningfully.
The National Gallery of Modern Art began its systematic acquisition of modern arts by purchasing Amrita Sher- Gil's paintings. Among the 161 paintings handed over to the National Gallery of Modern Art, Sher-Gil and Tagore's paintings comprised more than half of the museum's collection. An exemplary part of the museum's collection constitute the 33 paintings purchased by the government from Egan along with the 33 paintings donated by Sher- Gil's father Umrao Singh. Umrao Singh offered a great deal of work to the government with a precondition that it should also buy the husband's work: “They serve along with her early works to show the development of her art and talent… But if her later works are not actually acquired by our nation, then what good will the old style work, which she herself did not value, be.” [9] Nehru decided to solve the issue by promising Dr. Egan the requested amount of Rs. 50,000. The money was taken from the National Museum funds to acquire the Amrita Sher-Gil's collection, which became the first step towards a state-collection of modern art.
The year between 1950 and 1954 saw the acquisition of the same number of works by the artist Abanindranath Tagore. Furthermore, Abdur Rahman Chughtai was represented by ten paintings while Jamini Roy and Nandalal Bose by eight paintings each. [10] In 1953, in addition to Amrita's works, a collection of 66 paintings, sketches and drawings by Abanindranath Tagore were offered to the government for purchase. Pratima Tagore, Abanindranath's sister, offered her collection of 66 works of her brother to the government for Rs. 30,000. The paintings were stored at the Central Asian Antiquities Museum and shown occasionally at UNESCO meetings at the Parliament House. The National Gallery of Modern Art finally opened its doors at the Jaipur House, on 29 March 1954, under the administration of the government and an inaugural ceremony by Dr. Humayun Kabir, the then secretary of the Ministry of Education. [11]
The strength of the NGMA collection is its impressive representation of the evolution of modern Indian art. The gallery has paintings by artists including Thomas Daniell, Raja Ravi Verma, Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Rajkumar Sangwan, Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, Upendra Maharathi [12] and various other artists. [13]
The earliest are the indigenous schools of great Indian Miniatures: the vibrant Company, Kalighat and Tanjore schools of paintings. Academic Realists, Raja Ravi Varma, and those trained in the British art schools like M. F. Pithawala, Pestonjee Bomonjee, Hemen Majumdar amongst others contribute to a substantial presence. The next important phase of modern Indian artist, the Bengal School which countered the values of academic realists, is strongly represented by Abanindranath Tagore and his followers M. A. R Chughtai, Kshitindra Majumdar and others. The Santiniketan movement explored new aesthetic dimensions in its celebration of the environment, and its masters are Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Benode Behari Mukherjee. Even as the Santineketan artists flourished, four individual and original articulations of modernism emerged in the mid 1920s and 1930s. They are Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil and Jamini Roy. The NGMA has major collections of these artists oeuvre. 1940s onward saw the emergence of different artists groups in major cities. The Progressive Artists Group in Mumbai with M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza, K. H. Ara, S. H. Raza, the Calcutta group with Gopal Ghose, Paritosh Sen and Prodosh Das Gupta were significant in livening up the art scene of the period. Following the spirit of group activity, K. C. S. Paniker along with S. G. Vasudev, Paris Viswanathan and K. Ramanujan set up the idyllic artists' commune in Cholamandal, near Chennai.
The art of the 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of Indian abstract art and a pendulum swing between international modernism and traditional roots. The new artistic expressions find a strong place in the NGMA collection in the works of Biren De, G. R. Santosh, V. S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta, Satish Gujral, Akbar Padamsee, N. S. Bendre, K. K. Hebbar, Sailoz Mookherjea, Krishen Khanna and Ram Kumar. The NGMA also has some of the best works of K. G. Subramanyan, J. Swaminathan, A. Ramachandran and others. There is also a representative collection of artists who explored expressionism, surrealism, fantasies as well as pop art, during the 1960s and 1970s. Among other noted artists Ganesh Pyne, Bhupen Khakhar, G. M. Sheikh, Prabhakar Barwe, Arpita Singh, Rameshwar Broota, Jogen Chowdhury, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Nalini Malani, Vivan Sundaram, Paramjeet Singh, etc. are part of the collection. Contemporaries like Jitish Kallat, Jayashree Chakravarty, Atul Dodiya, Anju Dodiya, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Subodh Gupta, Pushpamala N. and Riyas Komu are also represented.
Printmaking has been a strong current in modern Indian art. The innovative experiments from the 19th century onwards have been recorded with an exemplary collection of graphic prints of artists such as Jyoti Bhatt, Somnath Hore, Krishna Reddy, Anupam Sud, and Laxma Goud.
The NGMA has a collection of modern sculptures by famous sculptors like D. P. Roy Choudhury, Chintamoni Kar and Ramkinkar Baij. [14] The NGMA holds a rich and varied collection of works of the major sculptors of the country with D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Ramkinkar Baij, Pradosh Das Gupta, Shankoo Chaudhuri, Meera Mukherjee, Amarnath Sehgal, Piloo Pochkhanwala, A. Davierwalla, Mahendra Pandya, Nagji Patel, Balbir Kat, Latika Kat, P. V. Jankiram, Nandgopal, and later contemporaries like Himmat Shah, Madan Lal, Mrinalini Mukherjee, Sudarshan Shetty, Subodh Gupta, Prithpal Singh Ladi, and Karlo Antao amongst other eminent sculptors, tracking the developments in the plastic arts. Painters, who have made significant contributions in sculpture, have been collected by NGMA like K. G. Subramanyan and Satish Gujral, amongst others.
The NGMA has a large collection of photographs by Lala Deen Dayal, one of the pioneers of photography in India. [15] The NGMA began collecting photographs as an art form during the late 1970s. The collection is small, yet distinguished. Raja Deen Dayal's photographs of the regal life of early 20th century Hyderabad are treasure. So are the photographs of contemporary India by Raghu Rai, and modern cinema by Nemai Ghosh and Dayanita Singh.
The collection also includes sculptures, graphics and paintings by international modern artists such as Jacob Epstein, Giorgio de Chirico, Sonia Delaunay, Antoni Tàpies, Robert Rauschenberg, Se Duk Lee, D. C. Daja, Peter Lubarda, Kozo Mio, George Keyt and Fred Thieler. [2]
Ratan Parimoo is an Indian art historian from Kashmir, who has worked as an art educator, pedagogue, artist and former director of the Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum, Ahmedabad. Ratan Parimoo was one of the founder members of Baroda Group.
The Bengal School of Art, commonly referred as Bengal School, was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal, primarily Kolkata and Shantiniketan, and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent, during the British Raj in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with Indian nationalism (swadeshi) and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), and was also being promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.
Abanindranath Tagore was the principal artist and creator of the "Indian Society of Oriental Art". He was also the first major exponent of Swadeshi values in Indian art. He founded the influential Bengal school of art, which led to the development of modern Indian painting. He was also a noted writer, particularly for children. Popularly known as 'Aban Thakur', his books Rajkahini, Buro Angla, Nalak, and Khirer Putul were landmarks in Bengali language children's literature and art.
Anjolie Ela Menon is one of India's leading contemporary artists. Her paintings are in several major collections, including the NGMA, the Chandigarh Museum and the Peabody Essex Museum. In 2006, her triptych work "Yatra" was acquired by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, California. Other works also been a part of group exhibitions including 'Kalpana: Figurative Art in India', presented by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) in London's Aicon Gallery in 2009. Her preferred medium is oil on masonite, though she has also worked in other media, including Murano glass, computer graphics and water colour. She is a well known muralist. She was awarded the Padma Shree in 2000. She lives and works in New Delhi.
Amrita Sher-Gil was a Hungarian-Indian painter. She has been called "one of the greatest avant-garde women artists of the early 20th century" and a pioneer in modern Indian art. Drawn to painting from an early age, Sher-Gil started formal lessons at the age of eight. She first gained recognition at the age of 19, for her 1932 oil painting Young Girls. Sher-Gil depicted everyday life of the people in her paintings.
Jamini Roy was an Indian painter. He was honoured by the Government of India the award of Padma Bhushan in 1954. He remains one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, another praised Indian artist and instructor. Roy's highly simplified, flattened-out style, and reminiscent of European modern art was influenced by the “bazaar” paintings sold at Indian temples as talismans.
Nandalal Bose was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.
The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art (LKA) is India's national academy of fine arts. It is an autonomous organisation, established in New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, in and outside the country.
Pakala Tirumal Reddy (1915–1996) was an Indian artist. He was the fifth child born to Ram Reddy and Ramanamma at Annaram village, Karimnagar district, Telangana, India. He received his diploma in painting from J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1939. He married Yashoda Reddy on 9 May 1947, and she completed a master's of art and Ph.D. degrees and authored over 22 compilations and novels.
Manishi Dey was an Indian painter of the Bengal School of Art. Manishi Dey was the younger brother of Mukul Dey, a pioneering Indian artist and dry point etcher. Their two sisters, Annapura and Rani, were accomplished in arts and crafts as well.
The modern Indian art movement in Indian painting is considered to have begun in Calcutta in the late nineteenth century. The old traditions of painting had more or less died out in Bengal and new schools of art were started by the British. Initially, protagonists of Indian art such as Raja Ravi Varma drew on Western traditions and techniques including oil paint and easel 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. It was succeeded by the Santiniketan school, led by Rabindranath Tagore's harking back to idyllic rural folk and rural life. Despite its country-wide influence in the early years, the importance of the school declined by the 'forties' and now it is as good as dead.
Raman Siva Kumar, known as R. Siva Kumar, is an Indian contemporary art historian, art critic, and curator. His major research has been in the area of early Indian modernism with special focus on the Santiniketan School. He has written several important books, lectured widely on modern Indian art and contributed articles to prestigious international projects such as the Art Journal, Grove Art Online or The Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press.
The Last Harvest was an exhibition of Rabindranath Tagore's paintings to mark the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth. It was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture, India and organised with the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA). It consisted of 208 paintings drawn from the collections of Visva Bharati and the NGMA. The exhibition was curated by art historian R. Siva Kumar. Asia Art Archive later classified the exhibition as a "world event".
National Gallery of Modern Art is an art gallery in Bangalore. It was inaugurated in the year 2009. It showcases modern Indian art and houses paintings by Raja Ravi Verma, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore and a large number of modern and contemporary artists. Equipped with an auditorium, a public art reference library, a cafeteria, and a museum shop cum facilitation block, the NGMA Bengaluru looks ahead to becoming a hub of art activities and a major cultural centre at Bengaluru. The gallery organizes and hosts talks on art and culture by speakers, seminars, film screenings as well as workshops and guided walks throughout the year.
Kala Bhavana is the fine arts faculty of Visva-Bharati University, in Shantiniketan, India. It is an institution of education and research in visual arts, founded in 1919, it was established by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism was an exhibition curated by R. Siva Kumar at the National Gallery of Modern Art in 1997, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India's Independence.
K. Venkatappa (1886–1965) was a pioneer painter, sculptor and an exponent of veena. He was born into a family of court painters in the princely state of Mysore, present day Karnataka. He was a pupil of Abanindranath Tagore. He was best known for his watercolors, with sensible realism. His Ootacamund watercolors reflect his independent vision.
Sunayani Devi was an Indian painter born into the aristocratic Tagore family in Calcutta, West Bengal. She was a self taught artist, with no academic training in art. Inspired by her brothers, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, and Samarendranath Tagore, she started painting only at the age of 30. She was married at the age of 12 to the grandson of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.
Bireswar Sen (1897–1974) was an Indian painter, writer, and teacher, who was influenced by the Bengal School of Art and Western modernism, but then later developed a unique visual language of miniatures. He depicted grand landscapes, mostly featuring the Himalayas, on paintings measuring smaller than postcards. Sen was popular and celebrated during his lifetime, but faded from public consciousness after his death.
DAG, previously known as Delhi Art Gallery, is an art house having galleries in India and New York. Started in 1993 in Hauz Khas by Rama Anand, DAG showcases modern Indian artists like Raja Ravi Verma, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, SH Raza among others.
Ahldag, Arnika (2021). "In transition: Collection building at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi" (PDF). Chitrolekha Journal on Art and Design. 5 (1). doi:10.21659/cjad.51.v5n104. S2CID 247332072 . Retrieved 29 January 2022.