Sarmaya Arts Foundation

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Sarmaya Arts Foundation
Sarmaya Ojas children's workshop Delhi 2022.jpg
Established2015 (2015)
Location Mumbai
Type Digital Archive
Collections Numismatics, Cartography, Photography, engravings, rare books, modern art, Folk Art
Website www.sarmaya.in

Sarmaya Arts Foundation is a not-for-profit curated repository of art, artefacts and living traditions from the Indian subcontinent, run by the Sarmaya Trust. Founded by former IndusInd Bank COO Paul Abraham in 2015, Sarmaya is based in Mumbai, India. [1] Sarmaya is a digital museum with a physical collection that represents the diverse histories and artistic traditions of the Subcontinent. Objects in the collection fall into the categories of numismatics, cartography, photography, engravings, modern art, living traditions and rare books.

Contents

Collections

The Sarmaya collection ranges from coins of the Gandhara age to Emperor Akbar’s gold mohur, a detailed map of the ancient dynasties that ruled India in 1022 AD, a selection of 19th century photographs presenting the first-ever portraits of India and triptych engraving of Tipu Sultan fighting the British army.

The genres in the collection are a mix of tribal and folk, including works by widely regarded genius of Gond art Jangarh Singh Shyam, as well as names like Phad painter Shrilal Joshi and Warli artist Jivya Soma Mhase. It also includes the works of Indian Modern masters like MF Husain, FN Souza and KH Ara, and an extensive body of works by Badri Narayan, AX Trindade and Jamini Roy. [1] [2]

A special project undertaken by Sarmaya founder Abraham has been the commission of Issa-nama : a miniature painting project depicting the life of Jesus Christ. The project has been undertaken in collaboration with miniature-painting artist Manish Soni in the Mughal painting style. [3]

Special exhibitions

Sarmaya's debut exhibition opened in January 2018 with Portrait of a Nation, a collection of rare 19th century photography from the Indian subcontinent. The show was curated by photographer Madhavan Pillai and designed by conservationist Abha Narain Lamba highlighted connections between the evolution of photography and the political landscape in India. Photographers featured included Raja Deen Dayal, Samuel Bourne, Felice Beato and Thomas Biggs. [4]

In August 2021, Sarmaya partnered with TARQ art gallery to stage the show Shifting Selves - Between meaning, mythology & mirage in Colaba, Mumbai. It centred around the themes of identity and self contained in the works of artists Saju Kunhan, Saubiya Chasmawala and Rithika Merchant. Their art was accompanied by other objects from Sarmaya's collection of 19th-century photography, numismatics and indigenous and contemporary Indian art. [5] The exhibition also included a digital art installation by Gaurav Ogale and Farah Mulla. [6]

In November 2022, Sarmaya partnered with Ojas Art in Delhi to stage the show Echoes of the Land - Art bears witness to a changing planet in Mehrauli . The exhibition featured contemporary Indian artists, most of whom practice traditional arts related to Mithila, Gond, Warli, Bhil and other indigenous communities. [7] The paintings, all part of the Sarmaya collection, included works by Ram Singh Urveti, Krishnanand Jha, Mayur and Tushar Vayeda, Zarina Hashmi, Gopa Trivedi and Sanjay Chitara. The exhibition explored themes like climate-change, pollution, species extinction and other issues of the Anthropocene, through Indian art. [8]

Films

Sarmaya has produced two short films on living art traditions in India. Tholu Bommalaata – Dance of the Shadow Puppets documented the work of National Award-winning artist Sindhe Chithambara Rao and his family in Dharmavaram, Andhra Pradesh. [9] The documentary won 3rd place at the Chitra Bharati Film Festival, 2022. Another film Madhubani - Art from a Sacred Land focused on the family of Moti Karn and Jyoti Karn, representing two generations of traditional Madhubani artists from Jitwarpur, Bihar.

Related Research Articles

This is an alphabetical index of articles related to painting.

The folklore of India encompasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize the vast folklore of India as a unit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian art</span> Art from Indian Subcontinent cultures

Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and at times eastern Afghanistan. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bengal School of Art</span> Art movement and a style of Indian painting in the early 20th century

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), but 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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mughal painting</span> South Asian painting in manuscript miniatures from the Mughal period

Mughal painting is a style of painting on paper confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums (muraqqa), from the territory of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. It emerged from Persian miniature painting and developed in the court of the Mughal Empire of the 16th to 18th centuries. Battles, legendary stories, hunting scenes, wildlife, royal life, mythology, as well as other subjects have all been frequently depicted in paintings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indian painting</span> History and overview of the painting in India

Indian painting has a very long tradition and history in Indian art, though because of the climatic conditions very few early examples survive. The earliest Indian paintings were the rock paintings of prehistoric times, such as the petroglyphs found in places like the Bhimbetka rock shelters. Some of the Stone Age rock paintings found among the Bhimbetka rock shelters are approximately 10,000 years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Madhubani art</span> Indian/Nepalese style of painting

Madhubani art is a style of painting practiced in the Mithila region of India and Nepal. It is named after the Madhubani district of Bihar, India, which is where it originated. Artists create these paintings using a variety of mediums, including their own fingers, or twigs, brushes, nib-pens, and matchsticks. The paint is created using natural dyes and pigments. The paintings are characterised by their eye-catching geometrical patterns. There is ritual content for particular occasions, such as birth or marriage, and festivals, such as Holi, Surya Shasti, Kali Puja, Upanayana, and Durga Puja.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jivya Soma Mashe</span> Indian artist

Jivya Soma Mashe was an artist of the Maharashtra state in India, who popularised the Warli tribal art form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Company style</span> Style of Indian painting

Company style, also known as Company painting is a term for a hybrid Indo-European style of paintings made in India by Indian artists, many of whom worked for European patrons in the East India Company or other foreign Companies in the 18th and 19th centuries. The style blended traditional elements from Rajput and Mughal painting with a more Western treatment of perspective, volume and recession. Most paintings were small, reflecting the Indian miniature tradition, but the natural history paintings of plants and birds were usually life size.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Muraqqa</span> Album in book form containing Islamic miniature paintings and calligraphy

A Muraqqa is an album in book form containing Islamic miniature paintings and specimens of Islamic calligraphy, normally from several different sources, and perhaps other matter. The album was popular among collectors in the Islamic world, and by the later 16th century became the predominant format for miniature painting in the Persian Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman empires, greatly affecting the direction taken by the painting traditions of the Persian miniature, Ottoman miniature and Mughal miniature. The album largely replaced the full-scale illustrated manuscript of classics of Persian poetry, which had been the typical vehicle for the finest miniature painters up to that time. The great cost and delay of commissioning a top-quality example of such a work essentially restricted them to the ruler and a handful of other great figures, who usually had to maintain a whole workshop of calligraphers, artists and other craftsmen, with a librarian to manage the whole process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh</span> Museum in Chandigarh, India

Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh, is a premier museum of North India having collections of Gandharan sculptures, sculptures from ancient and medieval India, Pahari and Rajasthani miniature paintings. It owes its existence to the partition of India in August, 1947. Prior to the partition, much of the collections of art objects, paintings and sculptures present here were housed in the Central Museum, Lahore, the then capital of Punjab. The museum has one of the largest collection of Gandharan artefacts in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Painting</span> Practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waswo X. Waswo</span>

Waswo X. Waswo, is a photographer and writer most commonly associated with his chemical process sepia-toned photographs of India, and also hand-colored portraits made at his studio in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Waswo’s first major book, India Poems: The Photographs, was in part a challenge to politically correct notions of the western artist's role in responding to Asia, and his work has been critiqued in the light of cultural theories that stem from Edward Said and his book Orientalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tribal art</span> Art made by the indigenous tribes

Tribal art is the visual arts and material culture of indigenous peoples. Also known as non-Western art or ethnographic art, or, controversially, primitive art, tribal arts have historically been collected by Western anthropologists, private collectors, and museums, particularly ethnographic and natural history museums. The term "primitive" is criticized as being Eurocentric and pejorative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jangarh Singh Shyam</span> Indian painter (1962–2001)

Jangarh Singh Shyam (1962–2001) was a pioneering contemporary Indian artist credited with being the creator of a new school of Indian art called Jangarh Kalam. His work has been exhibited widely the world over including Bhopal, Delhi, Tokyo and New York. His most notable exhibitions include the Magiciens de la terre in Paris (1989) and Other Masters curated by Jyotindra Jain at the Crafts Museum, New Delhi (1998). His 1988 piece Landscape with Spider sold for $31,250 at Sotheby's, New York, in 2010—a first for an adivasi artist. Jangarh had also painted the interiors of the Legislative Assembly of Madhya Pradesh, the Vidhan Bhavan, and the dome of Bhopal's Bharat Bhavan—one of the most prestigious museums of tribal and contemporary Indian art. He was among the first Gond artists to use paper and canvas for his paintings, thereby inaugurating what is now known as Jangarh Kalam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Arpana Caur</span>

Arpana Caur is an Indian contemporary painter and graphic artist. Arpana Caur exhibits dynamism and deep insight in her depictions of women’s conditions in modern India. A self-taught artist, Caur’s portrayals of women in urban environments reflect her concerns with the issues of our time: life and death, violence, the environment, and women’s issues. Clothing is a recurring theme in her work, both reinforcing and undermining the established image of women.

Durga Bai Vyam Indian painter (born 1973)

Durga Bai Vyam is an Indian artist. She is one of the foremost female artists based in Bhopal working in the Gond tradition of Tribal Art. Most of Durga's work is rooted in her birthplace, Barbaspur, a village in the Mandla district of Madhya Pradesh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dulari Devi (artist)</span> Indian folk Madhubani artist

Dulari Devi is an Indian artist and illustrator, working in the Mithila art tradition. In 2021, she was a recipient of the Padma Shri, a civilian honour granted by the Government of India, for her contributions to art.

Karpoori Devi was an Indian folk artist, painting in the Madhubani art tradition and creating textile art in the Sujni tradition. She belonged to an early generation of artists who sold Madhubani art with critical and commercial success, and her work has been archived in collections in India as well as Japan, Australia, and the United States of America.

Malvika Raj is an Indian artist and fashion designer. She works in the Madhubani style of art. As a Dalit, she has used art to express her experiences with caste-based discrimination in India, and uses traditional techniques to express themes relating to Dalit identity and the Buddhist religion.

References

  1. 1 2 "Did You Know That Induslnd's COO, Paul Abraham Owns A Historic Archive?". 8 August 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  2. "Inside Sarmaya, a self-funded museum which attempts to revive India's dying art forms". Firstpost. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  3. "Paul Abraham embarking upon a miniature paintings project depicting the life of Jesus Christ". mid-day. 30 September 2018. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  4. "Portrait of a Nation: 15 must-see photos of 19th & 20th century India". GQ India. Retrieved 22 September 2019.
  5. "Is this the most important Indian art exhibit of the season?". Vogue.in. 12 August 2021.
  6. "Frames of future past". Verve. 25 August 2021.
  7. "A brush for change". The Hindu. 4 November 2022.
  8. "The climate crisis in contemporary and indigenous art: An exhibition via Sarmaya". Hindustan Times. 4 November 2022.
  9. "Where the shadows speak". Arts Illustrated. 19 June 2020.