<p>Last month the DAG art company acquired the 75-year-old Jamini Roy House in Kolkata to set up India’s first private single-artist museum. An ode to India’s national treasure, and a fitting precursor to the show Living Traditions & The Art of Jamini Roy, which opened at DAG Mumbai last month.</p>.<p>The intimate show brings together some of the artist’s distinctive works, together with his early impressionistic paintings into which are knitted his love for music and dance traditions, and his flowing images of the mother and child, the mythological planes spanning both Hindu and Christian thoughts. The show also features portraits, scenes dipped in mythology from the Ramayana and Krishna Lila, Byzantine murals as well as painted figures of animals — including his popular ‘cat with lobster’— evocative of local terracotta toys.</p>.<p>“Jamini Roy is the most significant artist India produced in the 20th century. His expressions have changed the way we perceive modernism. He gave it strong Indian roots, which is a major achievement, and today his works remain unique and are recognisable around the world,” says Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director, DAG.</p>.<p>The brush drawings in lamp black by Roy are superlative renditions of Christ, and the mother and child. In economy lies depth and Roy’s departure from ornamentation aligns the attention of the viewer on the focal point of the compositions — an artful connection with the subject.</p>.<p class="CrossHead"><strong>Joys of solitude</strong></p>.<p>Embracing the joys of solitude is ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’, the second show at DAG Mumbai that brings together five Indian abstractionists from different parts of the world. </p>.<p>“Whether spontaneous or controlled, the language of abstraction allows artists the freedom to experiment in ways that are not confined by academic rostering. This sense of liberation extends from artists to viewers as well, extending its scope and freeing it up from the necessities of interpretation. This exhibition explores the works of two printmakers and three painters. Abstraction was crucial to the practice of each of these émigré artists, their uniqueness illustrated by the social and political stance taken by each of them in the process of creating art,” shares Ashish. The artworks examine the contours of the relationship each artist shares with her or his metier.</p>.<p>The simplicity of the meditations of Aligarh-born and New York-based Zarina Hashmi stun in the legacy she has left behind of explorations of places, and her consequent emotional dislocation in search for a home in a country slivered by Partition.</p>.<p>The cloudiness around her domicile always needled her thoughts, paving the way for her relationship with natural, fragile materials that inevitably unite with god.</p>.<p>“I do not feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go. In dreams and on sleepless nights, the fragrance of the garden, the image of the sky, and the sound of language return. I go back to the roads I have crossed many times. They are my companions and my solace,” she had written, in an artist statement for her residency at New York University. Her signature minimalism and fascination for geometry in architecture play out in serigraphs on paper and shifting lines — masquerading as borders in the recesses of her mind — as she coped with the scars of the Partition.</p>.<p>Renowned art critic Richard Bartholomew described Ambadas’ works as “an invocation of subterranean life, organic forms of the earth and underwater life”. The stunning abstracts of Ambadas put the spotlight on artists whose “contribution to Indian art-making has been significant but who have fallen off the grid, or not remained as popular,” says Kishore Singh, Senior VP at DAG. The riveting contours in the works by the Dalit artist, an alumnus of Sir JJ School of Art who later settled in Oslo in 1972, celebrate his pioneering techniques — of brushes dipped in kerosene and varnish to set the fluid rhythm in his paintings. A complex relationship between his humble origins, artful expressions and the goal of art as he always envisioned it to be. Call it a pantheon of thoughts that churned up with great gravitas towards the middle of the 20th century. With restless swirls of energy — an energetic tribute to his homeland — his works sync into his own words: “Nothing is empty, every bit of space breathes.”</p>
<p>Last month the DAG art company acquired the 75-year-old Jamini Roy House in Kolkata to set up India’s first private single-artist museum. An ode to India’s national treasure, and a fitting precursor to the show Living Traditions & The Art of Jamini Roy, which opened at DAG Mumbai last month.</p>.<p>The intimate show brings together some of the artist’s distinctive works, together with his early impressionistic paintings into which are knitted his love for music and dance traditions, and his flowing images of the mother and child, the mythological planes spanning both Hindu and Christian thoughts. The show also features portraits, scenes dipped in mythology from the Ramayana and Krishna Lila, Byzantine murals as well as painted figures of animals — including his popular ‘cat with lobster’— evocative of local terracotta toys.</p>.<p>“Jamini Roy is the most significant artist India produced in the 20th century. His expressions have changed the way we perceive modernism. He gave it strong Indian roots, which is a major achievement, and today his works remain unique and are recognisable around the world,” says Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director, DAG.</p>.<p>The brush drawings in lamp black by Roy are superlative renditions of Christ, and the mother and child. In economy lies depth and Roy’s departure from ornamentation aligns the attention of the viewer on the focal point of the compositions — an artful connection with the subject.</p>.<p class="CrossHead"><strong>Joys of solitude</strong></p>.<p>Embracing the joys of solitude is ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’, the second show at DAG Mumbai that brings together five Indian abstractionists from different parts of the world. </p>.<p>“Whether spontaneous or controlled, the language of abstraction allows artists the freedom to experiment in ways that are not confined by academic rostering. This sense of liberation extends from artists to viewers as well, extending its scope and freeing it up from the necessities of interpretation. This exhibition explores the works of two printmakers and three painters. Abstraction was crucial to the practice of each of these émigré artists, their uniqueness illustrated by the social and political stance taken by each of them in the process of creating art,” shares Ashish. The artworks examine the contours of the relationship each artist shares with her or his metier.</p>.<p>The simplicity of the meditations of Aligarh-born and New York-based Zarina Hashmi stun in the legacy she has left behind of explorations of places, and her consequent emotional dislocation in search for a home in a country slivered by Partition.</p>.<p>The cloudiness around her domicile always needled her thoughts, paving the way for her relationship with natural, fragile materials that inevitably unite with god.</p>.<p>“I do not feel at home anywhere, but the idea of home follows me wherever I go. In dreams and on sleepless nights, the fragrance of the garden, the image of the sky, and the sound of language return. I go back to the roads I have crossed many times. They are my companions and my solace,” she had written, in an artist statement for her residency at New York University. Her signature minimalism and fascination for geometry in architecture play out in serigraphs on paper and shifting lines — masquerading as borders in the recesses of her mind — as she coped with the scars of the Partition.</p>.<p>Renowned art critic Richard Bartholomew described Ambadas’ works as “an invocation of subterranean life, organic forms of the earth and underwater life”. The stunning abstracts of Ambadas put the spotlight on artists whose “contribution to Indian art-making has been significant but who have fallen off the grid, or not remained as popular,” says Kishore Singh, Senior VP at DAG. The riveting contours in the works by the Dalit artist, an alumnus of Sir JJ School of Art who later settled in Oslo in 1972, celebrate his pioneering techniques — of brushes dipped in kerosene and varnish to set the fluid rhythm in his paintings. A complex relationship between his humble origins, artful expressions and the goal of art as he always envisioned it to be. Call it a pantheon of thoughts that churned up with great gravitas towards the middle of the 20th century. With restless swirls of energy — an energetic tribute to his homeland — his works sync into his own words: “Nothing is empty, every bit of space breathes.”</p>
