How Bengal’s early modern artists reinvented art in a quest for identity ?

The quest for Identity is an art show in Akara art, Mumbai. This art show focusses on the artwork of those early modern artists, which were responsible for the modernism in Indian art.

(New Clouds, 1937 by Nandalal Bose, a renowned Bengal School artist, Courtesy: artisera.com)

The works of 10 artists are exhibited there –Abanindranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij, Benode Bihari Mukherjee, Prasanta Roy, KG Subramanyan, Sudhir Khastagir, and Somnath Hore.

(Bengal Painting, early 20th century, Courtesy: textsandterms.com)

Why only these artists are chosen for the Quest of Identity is a question worth pondering upon, and a question that has some strings connected to your question too. It is believed that it was Bengal’s early modern art which shaped the Indian modernism. The two major contributors to this were the Bengal school of art and Santiniketan, started by Rabindranath Tagore.

(Courtesy: apnedeshkojano.com)

The artists mentioned above are put together by Akara Art under the same banner because their ideologies had the same meeting point –the conjunction of the western idiom with the traditional past. They were reluctant to let go of their roots, while at the same time they wanted to embrace the newness western art had. Not only this, they tried to have the best of all the cultures within their reach. They even experimented with Oriental art and Mughal miniature and tried to inculcate even Japanese and Chinese art in their artistic projects.

With this wide perspective and inclusive attitude, they aimed at creating an artistic counter-narrative for the nationalist movement and against the colonial rule. Opposing the western hegemony by creating their own indigenous modernity was the way they figured out for the quest of identity, revolutionizing the Indian artistic narrative.