Modern and contemporary Indian art

In short

Modern and contemporary Indian art covers roughly 1850 to the present: the colonial art schools and Company painting, Raja Ravi Varma's academic oils, the nationalist Bengal School, the internationalist modernism of the Progressive Artists' Group after 1947, the regional movements of Baroda, Madras and Delhi, and the installation, video and performance practice that followed economic liberalisation in 1991. It is the backbone of the art-history papers in BFA/BVA (UGC-CBCS) courses and of entrance tests such as the BHU/MSU Baroda/Delhi College of Art and NTA-conducted art-history papers. In studio practice it supplies the vocabulary a student uses to place their own work in a lineage — asked directly in jury vivas, portfolio reviews and MFA interviews. Professionally it is the working knowledge of gallery and auction-house staff, museum and biennale teams, art writers, conservators and arts administrators. It also carries the legal and market layer: the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, the Copyright Act, 1957 and the GST treatment of art sales.

Explained

Colonial beginnings: Company painting and the academic turn (c. 1760–1900)

• Company painting (Company Qalam): hybrid work made by Indian painters for East India Company patrons — Mughal/Rajput miniature training applied to European watercolour, linear perspective and shading; subjects were trades, castes, birds, monuments. Centres: Murshidabad, Patna (Patna Qalam — Sewak Ram, Hulas Lal, Shiva Lal), Delhi, Thanjavur, Tiruchirappalli.
• Art schools founded on the South Kensington model: Madras (1850, by Alexander Hunter), Calcutta Government School of Art (1854), Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay (1857), Mayo School, Lahore (1875). They taught drawing from the cast and the model, oil technique and perspective — producing illustrators, draughtsmen and lithographers for the colonial economy.
• Raja Ravi Varma (1848–1906, Kilimanoor, Travancore): mastered oil and the academic idiom without a school training; painted Puranic subjects (*Shakuntala*, *Damayanti*, *Birth of Shakuntala*) and aristocratic portraits. His oleograph press (set up 1894, later at Lonavla/Karla) mass-produced colour lithographs that fixed the popular image of Hindu deities — the beginning of the printed calendar-art idiom.
• Criticism of him: the nationalist generation attacked the European realism as borrowed and theatrical; later scholarship (Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Geeta Kapur's essay on Ravi Varma) reads him instead as the first modern Indian picture-maker and the originator of a mass visual culture.
• Parallel bodies: Bombay Art Society (1888), Indian Society of Oriental Art (1907), AIFACS, Delhi (1928).

The Bengal School and the Santiniketan alternative (1900–1947)

• Swadeshi context: the Partition of Bengal (1905) and the search for an authentically Indian art. E. B. Havell, principal at Calcutta (from 1896), replaced cast-drawing with the study of Ajanta, Mughal and Rajput painting.
• Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951): leader of the school; the wash technique (repeated dilute washes giving a misty, atmospheric surface), small scale, lyrical and literary subjects. *Bharat Mata* (1905) turned the nation into a four-armed ascetic figure; *Arabian Nights* series (1928–30). Influenced by Okakura Kakuzo's pan-Asianism and the Japanese painters Taikan Yokoyama and Hishida Shunso.
• Followers: Nandalal Bose, Asit Kumar Haldar, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Sarada Ukil, Sunayani Devi (self-taught, folk-inflected), Abdur Rahman Chughtai (Lahore).
• Nandalal Bose (1882–1966): copied the Ajanta and Bagh murals; developed a firm calligraphic line; the Haripura Congress panels (1938) used village life and tempera on handmade paper; he supervised the decoration of the original manuscript of the Constitution of India (1949–50).
• Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan (1919): Rabindranath Tagore's institution — rejected both academic realism and Bengal School revivalism in favour of direct observation, craft, murals and the local environment. Faculty: Nandalal Bose, Binodebehari Mukherjee (near-blind in later life; the mural *Medieval Saints / Hindi Bhavana* 1946–47), Ramkinkar Baij, later K. G. Subramanyan, A. Ramachandran, Somnath Hore.
• Rabindranath Tagore's own paintings (from c. 1928): began from crossings-out in manuscripts; dark, expressionist, unschooled — closer to European Expressionism and "primitive" art than to anything Indian then.
• The independent moderns: Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–41) — Hungarian-Indian, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris; after returning in 1934 she fused post-impressionist modelling with Ajanta and Basohli flatness (*Three Girls* 1935, *Bride's Toilet*, *Brahmacharis*, *South Indian Villagers Going to a Market* — the 1937 "South Indian trilogy"). Jamini Roy (1887–1972) abandoned academic portraiture for the Kalighat pat and patua idiom — flat brush-drawn forms, earth pigments, tempera on cloth and mat. Gaganendranath Tagore made the only Indian Cubist-inflected work of the 1920s; Rabindranath's circle, the Calcutta Group (1943) (Prodosh Das Gupta, Nirode Mazumdar, Paritosh Sen, Gopal Ghose) responded to the Bengal famine with a harsher social realism.

Modernism after 1947: the Progressives and the regional movements

• Progressive Artists' Group (Bombay, 1947): F. N. Souza (founder), S. H. Raza, M. F. Husain, K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre (the sculptor of the group), H. A. Gade. They rejected Bengal School revivalism and declared for an international modernist language — Expressionism, Cubism, Post-Impressionism — applied to Indian subjects. Dissolved by the mid-1950s as members left for Europe.
• Later associates and Bombay contemporaries: V. S. Gaitonde (non-objective, meditative, Zen-influenced canvases), Akbar Padamsee (*Prophet*, *Metascapes*; founded the interdisciplinary VIEW workshops), Tyeb Mehta (the diagonal, the falling figure, *Celebration*, *Mahishasura*), Ram Kumar (abstracted Banaras landscapes), Krishen Khanna, Bhupen Khakhar, Nasreen Mohamedi (minimal graphite-and-ink line drawings, photographs), Zarina Hashmi (printmaking on paper, *Home is a Foreign Place*).
• Delhi Shilpi Chakra (1949): post-Partition artists in Delhi — B. C. Sanyal, K. S. Kulkarni, Satish Gujral, Dhanraj Bhagat.
• Group 1890 (Bhavnagar, 1963): twelve artists, one exhibition, a manifesto drafted largely by J. Swaminathan rejecting both revivalism and derivative European abstraction; members included Jeram Patel, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Himmat Shah, Ambadas, Raghav Kaneria, Jyoti Bhatt.
• Baroda (M. S. University, Faculty of Fine Arts, 1950): India's most influential art school — N. S. Bendre, K. G. Subramanyan (the "living tradition": craft, mural, terracotta, the artist as teacher-maker), Sankho Chaudhuri. The 1981 exhibition "Place for People" (curated statement by Geeta Kapur) launched the narrative-figurative tendency: Bhupen Khakhar, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Vivan Sundaram, Nalini Malani, Sudhir Patwardhan, Jogen Chowdhury.
• Madras Movement / Cholamandal Artists' Village (1966): founded by K. C. S. Paniker near Chennai as a self-supporting artists' settlement; Paniker's *Words and Symbols* series used Tamil/Malayalam script and tantric diagrams; artists Santhanaraj, Munuswamy, Dhanapal, Redappa Naidu, V. Viswanadhan.
• Neo-Tantric abstraction (1960s–70s): Biren De, G. R. Santosh, Prabhakar Barwe, Sohan Qadri, K. V. Haridasan — yantra/bindu geometry and chakra colour as a modern idiom; S. H. Raza's later Bindu canvases are its best-known form.
• Social realism and the political print: Chittaprosad and Zainul Abedin on the 1943 Bengal famine; Somnath Hore's *Wounds* series and paper-pulp prints; Sudhir Patwardhan's Mumbai suburbs; the Kerala Radical Painters and Sculptors Association (1987, K. P. Krishnakumar) which rejected the market outright.

Sculpture, printmaking and craft-based practice

• Ramkinkar Baij (1906–80): the first Indian modern sculptor of consequence — Santhal Family (1938) and *Mill Call* at Santiniketan, built in cement concrete over an armature with laterite pebbles, outdoors and public; monumental yet drawn from tribal labour.
• D. P. Roy Choudhury (1899–1975): *Triumph of Labour* (Chennai Marina) and *Martyrs' Memorial*, Patna — academic bronze realism in the service of the new nation.
• Modernist sculptors: Sankho Chaudhuri (lyrical abstraction in wood/metal), Dhanraj Bhagat, Prodosh Das Gupta, Amarnath Sehgal, Himmat Shah (terracotta and bronze heads), Nagji Patel (stone), Balbir Singh Katt, Meera Mukherjee (studied the Bastar/Bankura lost-wax (dhokra) method and cast *Ashoka at Kalinga* by it), Mrinalini Mukherjee (dyed hemp-fibre knotted figures), Ravinder Reddy (gilded, polychrome FRP heads), Anish Kapoor and Dhruva Mistry (diaspora practice).
• Printmaking: Nandalal Bose and Mukul Dey (etching), Haren Das (wood engraving), Krishna Reddy (co-director of Atelier 17, Paris; invented simultaneous colour viscosity printing on a single intaglio plate), Somnath Hore, Laxma Goud, Jyoti Bhatt, Anupam Sud (the figure and gender), Kanchan Chander. Garhi Studios (Delhi) and the Baroda print studio were the workshops.
• Craft-modern continuum: K. G. Subramanyan's toys, terracotta and glass reverse-painting; Jyotsna Bhatt's ceramics; Devi Lal Patidar and the Bharat Bhavan (Bhopal, 1982) model of placing adivasi artists (Jangarh Singh Shyam — Gond/Jangarh Kalam) alongside urban moderns. (Folk and tribal traditions themselves are treated in a separate note; what belongs here is their appropriation into modernism and the contemporary market.)

Contemporary art since 1991: medium, politics, infrastructure

• The turning point: liberalisation (1991), satellite television, the Mandal and Ayodhya years and the 1992–93 Bombay riots shifted practice from the painted canvas to installation, video, photography, performance and the archive.
• Landmark works: Vivan Sundaram's *Memorial* (1993, from a press photograph of a riot victim); Nalini Malani's shadow plays and video (*Remembering Toba Tek Singh*); Atul Dodiya's shutter paintings; Subodh Gupta's stainless-steel utensil sculptures (*Very Hungry God*); Bharti Kher's bindi works and *The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own*; Jitish Kallat's *Public Notice* series; Sheela Gowda's cow-dung, kumkum and rope installations; Shilpa Gupta's interactive and text works; Sudarshan Shetty; N. S. Harsha; Ranbir Kaleka's video-painting; Raqs Media Collective and Sarai (CSDS) on the city and the archive; Thukral & Tagra on consumerism; Dayanita Singh's "book-objects"; Pushpamala N.'s photo-performance; Tejal Shah and Nikhil Chopra on gender and the body.
• Curatorial and critical frame: Geeta Kapur (*When Was Modernism*, the question of whether India had a modernism or a set of modernisms), Journal of Arts & Ideas, Ranjit Hoskote, Nancy Adajania, Gayatri Sinha; the debate on "Indian art" versus the global contemporary, and on whether the work is made for a local public or an international biennale circuit.
• Infrastructure: Kochi-Muziris Biennale (first edition December 2012, artist-led, founded by Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu; the Students' Biennale alongside); India Art Fair, Delhi (from 2008, originally India Art Summit); Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa; Khoj International Artists' Association (Delhi, residencies); Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (2010, India's largest private modern/contemporary museum); Devi Art Foundation; Museum of Art & Photography, Bengaluru (opened 2023); Bihar Museum; Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai.
• Public money and the public: Lalit Kala Akademi (1954) with its regional centres and national exhibition; National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi 1954; Mumbai and Bengaluru branches); Ministry of Culture scholarships and senior/junior fellowships; the Kala Kumbh and public-art commissions of state governments and metro corporations (Delhi, Kochi, Nagpur metro art).

The art economy, law and professional practice

• Primary market: galleries on 40–50% commission (rates vary by contract) — Chemould, Jhaveri, Experimenter, Nature Morte, Vadehra, Chatterjee & Lal, Gallery Espace. Secondary market: auction houses Saffronart, AstaGuru, Pundole's, Christie's and Sotheby's (Indian/South Asian sales in New York, London, Mumbai).
• Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 (with the 1973 Rules): any art object not less than 100 years old is an antiquity; export of antiquities is prohibited except by the Central Government or its authorised agency; dealing requires a licence and registration of specified antiquities with the Archaeological Survey of India. The Act also allows the Centre to notify the work of a dead artist as an "art treasure" — notified artists (the nine declared so far are Raja Ravi Varma, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Amrita Sher-Gil, Jamini Roy, Sailoz Mookherjea and Nicholas Roerich) cannot have their work exported, whatever its age. A Bill to amend/replace the 1972 Act has been under discussion; until it is notified, the 1972 Act governs.
• Copyright Act, 1957: a painting, sculpture, drawing, engraving or photograph is an "artistic work"; term of protection is the author's life + 60 years (counted from the beginning of the calendar year following death). Section 57 moral rights (paternity and integrity) survive assignment — established in Indian law by *Amar Nath Sehgal v. Union of India* (Delhi HC, 2005), where the destruction of Sehgal's Vigyan Bhavan mural was held to violate his moral rights. Section 53A gives the author (or legal heirs) a resale share right in the resale of an original copy of a painting, sculpture or drawing above a prescribed price, at a rate fixed by the Copyright Board/Registrar — in practice rarely enforced in India. Section 52 fair-dealing exceptions cover criticism, review and reporting.
• Other statutes touching the field: Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958 (sites and monuments); Indian Treasure Trove Act, 1878; Customs Act, 1962 for import/export clearance; Information Technology Act provisions and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita offences invoked in obscenity/religious-sentiment cases — the long litigation against M. F. Husain's nude *Bharat Mata* and Hindu-goddess images, which ended with the Delhi High Court quashing the complaints (2008) on the reasoning that nudity in Indian art is not per se obscene, is the standard case-law example; Husain nevertheless left India and died in 2011 a Qatari citizen.
• Tax: artists registered under GST charge it on sales of original art; after the rationalisation effective 22 September 2025 the slabs are 5%, 18% and 40% and the 12% slab was removed, so original paintings, drawings and sculptures (HSN 9701/9703) fall in the lowest slab — verify the rate against the current notification for the exact HSN before invoicing, since this classification moved recently. Income from art practice is business/professional income under the Income-tax Act, 2025 (in force from 1 April 2026); gains on sale of art held as investment are taxed as capital gains, art being a "capital asset" that does not qualify for depreciation.

Key points

• Company painting - Indian miniature-trained painters working in European watercolour realism for colonial patrons; Patna Qalam is its best-known school.
• Raja Ravi Varma - academic oil + the oleograph press (1894); created India's modern popular religious image.
• E. B. Havell and Abanindranath Tagore - replaced cast-drawing with Ajanta/Mughal study; the wash technique is the Bengal School's signature.
• Bharat Mata (1905) - Abanindranath's small wash painting that gave the nationalist movement its icon.
• Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan (1919) - rejected both academic realism and revivalism; mural, craft and direct observation.
• Nandalal Bose - Haripura panels (1938) and the decoration of the Constitution manuscript; calligraphic line.
• Amrita Sher-Gil - Paris training plus Ajanta/Basohli flatness; the first truly modernist Indian painter of the figure.
• Jamini Roy - deliberate return to Kalighat pat: flat brush line, earth pigment, tempera on cloth.
• Progressive Artists' Group (1947) - Souza, Raza, Husain, Ara, Bakre, Gade; internationalist modernism against revivalism.
• Group 1890 (1963) - one exhibition, one manifesto (Swaminathan); rejected both revivalism and imported abstraction.
• "Place for People" (1981) - Baroda narrative-figurative turn; Geeta Kapur's critical frame.
• Cholamandal (1966) - Paniker's self-supporting artists' village; the Madras Movement's words-and-symbols idiom.
• Ramkinkar Baij - *Santhal Family* (1938), cement concrete, outdoor, labouring subject: Indian modern sculpture begins here.
• Krishna Reddy - simultaneous colour viscosity printing from one intaglio plate.
• 1991 and after - installation, video, performance and the archive replace the canvas as the default; the city, riot, migration and gender become subjects.
• Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012) - India's first biennale, artist-led, Kerala government supported.
• Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 - 100-year test for antiquity; export prohibited; dead artists can be notified as "art treasures".
• Copyright Act, 1957 - artistic works protected for life + 60 years; s.57 moral rights (Sehgal case); s.53A resale share right.

Examples

Case 1 — Attribute an unlabelled painting by style. A small tempera, 25 × 18 cm, on handmade paper: a blue-grey mist, no cast shadows, no horizon line, a solitary ascetic figure, soft graded tone built from many dilute layers, Sanskrit-derived title.

1. Scale, support and the wash build → Bengal School, not academic oil.
2. No perspective, no modelling by light → deliberately anti-European.
3. Single lyrical literary figure, mood over narrative → Abanindranath Tagore's circle (c. 1905–25); if the line is firmer and the subject is village labour in bold flat colour, read Nandalal Bose's Haripura idiom instead.

Answer: Bengal School wash painting, Abanindranath's lineage.

Case 2 — Compare two treatments of the same subject (exam question: "the village in modern Indian art").

Case 3 — Is a 1920 painting exportable, and is it still in copyright? A Nandalal Bose tempera dated 1920, owned by a Kolkata family in 2026, offered to a London buyer.

1. Age test (Antiquities Act, 1972): 2026 − 1920 = 106 years, i.e. not less than 100 → the work is an antiquity, so export is prohibited.
2. Art-treasure test: Nandalal Bose is among the artists notified under the Act, so his work cannot be exported regardless of age — the answer would be the same for a 1960 work.
3. Copyright term: he died in 1966 → the 60-year term runs from 1 January 1967, so copyright subsists to 31 December 2026 and the work enters the public domain on 1 January 2027. Reproduction rights until then need the heirs' licence; moral rights under s.57 continue independently.

Answer: sale within India is lawful, export is not; reproduction still needs permission in 2026.

Case 4 — Compute copyright expiry for three artists (life + 60, from the year after death).

So Sher-Gil images may be reproduced freely today; Husain images may not until 2072. Export is a separate test: Sher-Gil's originals are barred because she is one of the notified "art treasure" artists, while Husain is not notified and his works are well under 100 years old, so they are exportable on the usual customs documentation.

Case 5 — Read the market. Indian modern (pre-1990) work commands far higher prices than contemporary work: the top of the market is held by Husain, Sher-Gil, Gaitonde, Raza, Tyeb Mehta and Souza, with reported records in the ₹50–120 crore range — M. F. Husain's large 1954 canvas *Untitled (Gram Yatra)* sold at Christie's New York in March 2025 for about US$13.8 million, reported as the highest price for any Indian artwork, and Amrita Sher-Gil's *The Story Teller* set the then-record at ₹61.8 crore at Saffronart in September 2023. Exact figures are hammer-plus-premium and vary by report, so cite them as reported. Exam/interview inference: scarcity (a dead artist, a fixed oeuvre), institutional validation and documented provenance drive price far more than medium — which is why installation and video practice depends on biennales, museums and public funding rather than on sales.

Where it is used

• Galleries and auction houses (Saffronart, AstaGuru, Pundole's, Vadehra, Nature Morte): cataloguing, condition reports, provenance research, attribution, estimate-setting — roles for BFA/MFA art-history graduates.
• Museums and public institutions (NGMA, KNMA, MAP Bengaluru, CSMVS, Bhau Daji Lad, Bihar Museum, state Lalit Kala Akademis): curation, wall texts, education programmes, registrar and collections work.
• Biennales and festivals (Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India Art Fair, Serendipity Arts, Khoj residencies): curatorial assistance, production, artist liaison, Students' Biennale mentoring.
• Art writing, publishing and media: reviews and features for art magazines and newspapers, auction catalogue essays, art-history teaching in BFA/BVA and school art curricula.
• Studio practice itself: jury vivas and MFA/residency applications require the candidate to locate their work in a lineage — Baroda narrative-figurative, neo-tantric abstraction, post-1990 installation.
• Compliance-facing work: ASI antiquity registration and export clearance, customs documentation for loans and shipments, copyright and reproduction licensing for publishers, insurers and conservators.

Interview questions

• Q: What did the Bengal School react against, and what did it put in its place? A: Against the European academic realism taught in the colonial art schools and exemplified by Ravi Varma; in its place, the wash technique, small scale, literary and spiritual subjects, and the study of Ajanta, Mughal and Rajput painting.
• Q: Why is Raja Ravi Varma called modern if his technique was European and academic? A: He was the first Indian artist to work as an independent professional for a mass market, and his oleographs created a pan-Indian printed visual culture — modernity in condition and circulation, not in style.
• Q: How did Santiniketan differ from the Bengal School it grew out of? A: It dropped revivalist wash painting for direct observation, murals, craft, terracotta and the local environment, and treated the artist as teacher-maker rather than picture-maker.
• Q: What was the Progressive Artists' Group's position? A: Formed in Bombay in 1947 by Souza, Raza, Husain, Ara, Bakre and Gade, it rejected nationalist revivalism and claimed an international modernist language for Indian subjects.
• Q: Which single exhibition marks the narrative-figurative turn, and why does it matter? A: "Place for People" (1981), with Khakhar, Sheikh, Sundaram, Malani, Patwardhan and Chowdhury — it argued for narrative, the local and the political against pure abstraction.
• Q: Why is *Santhal Family* a landmark? A: Ramkinkar Baij made it in 1938 in cement concrete, outdoors and at monumental scale, with migrant Santhal labourers as the subject — Indian sculpture's break from academic bronze and from mythological subject matter.
• Q: What changed in Indian art after 1991? A: Liberalisation, new media and a global exhibition circuit shifted practice to installation, video, photography and performance, with the city, migration, communal violence and gender as subjects.
• Q: What is the 100-year rule, and does it settle whether a painting can leave India? A: Under the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972 an art object not less than 100 years old is an antiquity and cannot be exported; but a work of any age by an artist notified as an "art treasure" is also barred, so age alone does not settle it.
• Q: What are moral rights, and which Indian case established them? A: Section 57 of the Copyright Act, 1957 gives the author rights of attribution and integrity that survive assignment; *Amar Nath Sehgal v. Union of India* (2005) held the destruction of his Vigyan Bhavan mural to be a violation.
• Q: How long does copyright last on a painting in India? A: The author's lifetime plus 60 years, counted from the beginning of the calendar year following the year of death.
• Q: Why do modern works sell for far more than contemporary ones? A: Fixed oeuvres of dead artists, long institutional validation and documented provenance; contemporary installation and video depend on biennales, commissions and public funding instead of resale.
• Q: Did India have one modernism or several? A: Several — Bengal, Santiniketan, Bombay, Baroda, Madras, Delhi and Kerala each produced a distinct modernism, which is why the field is written as plural modernisms rather than a single national movement.

Common mistakes

• Treating Bengal School and Santiniketan as the same thing; Kala Bhavana was set up partly against Bengal School revivalism.
• Calling the Bengal School's wash technique a Japanese import wholesale, or ignoring the Okakura/Yokoyama contact altogether — both overstate one side.
• Describing Amrita Sher-Gil as a Bengal School painter, or Jamini Roy as a folk artist; Roy was an academy-trained painter who chose the folk idiom.
• Listing the Progressive Artists' Group with the wrong membership — Bakre (sculptor) and Gade are the two most often dropped.
• Writing that Group 1890 was a long-running movement; it held one exhibition in 1963.
• Giving the copyright term as 60 years from the date of the work instead of life plus 60 years from the year after death, and assuming public-domain status also permits export.
• Quoting auction records without the date, house and currency, or repeating a crore figure that was in fact hammer price in dollars.

Related topics

Art and architecture of India · Western art history: Renaissance to contemporary · Aesthetics and art criticism: Indian and Western · Indian folk and tribal art traditions · Printmaking and graphic processes · Museology, curatorial practice and art conservation