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More than 500 of Manhattan’s art lovers packed Delhi Art Gallery’s (DAG) 7,000-square-foot space in the iconic Fuller Building here for the grand opening, coinciding with Asia Week, March 17. DAG’s first New York exhibition, India Modern: Narratives from 20th century Indian art, includes a collection of almost 100 pieces by 42 of India’s most prominent modernists such as F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, Manjit Bawa, S.K. Bakre, Ram Kumar, Akbar Padamsee, Avinash Chandra, G.R. Santosh and many others.
Noting that Indian art has had very little space in America, Delhi Art Gallery’s India-based managing director, Ashish Anand, said they hope to significantly increase its presence and look forward to sharing Indian modern art with the rest of the world.
Established in 1993, Delhi Art Gallery is India’s largest repository of modern masters representing the gamut of art practice in the twentieth century. It has established its presence by building what is arguably the largest collection of Indian modern and contemporary art of museum-quality, a DAG press release said.
The gallery’s collection traces the genesis of Indian modernism to the 19th century and continues through important movements such as the revivalist Bengal School or Santiniketan’s thrust towards modernism. Artists in Calcutta and Bombay picked up the mantle next, such as the Progressive Artists’ Group in Bombay, which closely followed Western art but within an Indian context, giving rise to such artists as F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain and S. H. Raza, and in Calcutta, a host of significant modernists.
