The ongoing exhibition at the Delhi Art Gallery charts the development of abstracts in modern Indian art. Kishore Singh, head publication and exhibition, tells Divya Kaushik about the factors that influenced the style of various artists
Stark colours and sharp contours are the only common features of some of the paintings displayed at the Delhi Art Gallery. The varying textures, layers and patterns narrate more than what is visible to the eye. These paintings by the masters of abstract form chart the development of abstraction in modern Indian art. Featuring close to 70 artists, the exhibition brings together a vast body of work spanning a range of styles that have evolved in Indian art. The retrospective is an investigation into the evolution of abstraction from the early 1950s till present times. Titled Indian Abstracts: An Absence of Form, the exhibition explores the eventful and unique journey of abstraction. It features prominent and significant abstractionists recognised for maturity of their imagery, such as VS Gaitonde, SH Raza, Ram Kumar, Nasreen Mohammedi, Zarina Hashmi, Jeram Patel, Shanti Dave, Ganesh Haloi, Krishna Reddy, J Swaminathan and V Vishwanathan.
Abstraction in India was a gradual process with artists moving away from figurative conventions during the course of the 1950s and 60s. In the early 1950s MF Husain broke up his images, forging a new pictorial vocabulary. This was followed by VS Gaitonde, Ram Kumar and NS Bendre in the late 1950s who initially attempted a semi-abstract language. Kishore Singh, head publication and exhibition at Delhi Art Gallery, informs, “A number of other painters also took the plunge, adopting abstraction either partially or wholly. These included Biren De, KG Subramanyan, KS Kulkarni, KK Hebbar, Bimal Das Gupta, KCS Paniker, Dinkar Kowshik, Chintamoni Kar and Sankho Chaudhuri. Tracing the evolution of the major painters in India, critic Richard Bartholomew made an insightful observation: While in 1947 all the Indian painters were figurative in style, by the early 1960s a majority of them had turned to abstraction. Among them were Ram Kumar, Mohan Samant, VS Gaitonde, Krishen Khanna, SH Raza, Kanwal Krishna, Satish Gujral, Avinash Chandra and Krishna Reddy. Delving into the reasons for this metamorphosis, Bartholomew believed that these artists had been using the figure as a sort of symbol. However, having exhausted its possibilities, they did not feel the need for symbolic expressionism any longer and had therefore phased it out.”
Indian abstract artists drew on a range of influences in their work. Raza’s abstract art is mired in memories spent in the forests of his native village of Barbaria in Madhya Pradesh. Although he began his career with expressionist land and cityscapes, his forms melted and he turned his attention to line and pure geometrical forms such as squares and circles. VS Gaitonde, who is identified as one of the early abstractionists from the 1950’s, initially began from arrangement of geometric shapes reminiscent of Paul Klee but later moved on to create large works with broad tonal expanses evoking the experience of vastness in nature.
“At a purely formal level, Indian artists exhibited some characteristics in their paintings offering a melange of styles. There is Planar abstraction — proponents of this style of painting broke up the pictorial surface using planes of colour. Ram Kumar, who initially placed his figures in front of fragmented planes and wasted landscapes, obliterated them completely by 1958-60. Then, it is Geometric abstraction — in this form of abstraction, natural organic forms are rejected in favour of the organisation of severely restricted pictorial elements. lines and geometrical shapes predominate. Some artists who favoured this form of abstraction included Nasreen Mohamedi, Raza, V Viswanadhan, J Swaminathan, Sukanta Basu, Gulam rasool Santosh, Ganesh Haloi and Om Prakash. Calligraphy played a pivotal role in the works of artists like Gaitonde, RK Bhatnagar and KCS Paniker. Abstract expressionism, which gained currency in the West, could be subdivided into two main streams. Action painting with its emphasis on gesture and colour-field painting which concentrated on the lyrical possibilities of colour. Indian artists exhibited characteristics of both the genres with artists such as Ambadas and Jeram Patel ascribing to the former and Naren Nath to the latter. Ambadas’ vigorous and powerful strokes and his expressive brushwork serve to focus attention on texture, gesture and mark-making. Colour-field painting, on the other hand, served to eliminate depth with figure and ground melting into one. This could be seen in Gaitonde’s paintings which consisted of liquid fields of colour, albeit broken up by outcrops of paint. Some Indian artists moved from depicting the outer landscape to an internal investigation which focussed on the mindscape instead. Several artists saw in abstract art the possibility of reaching a higher plane of consciousness and essaying the sublime. Ambadas, by his own admission, drew inspiration from Indian mystical thought, Vedanta. He believed that Vedanta had affinities with abstract expressionism in that both regarded art as revelation. Gaitonde was greatly influenced by Chinese philosophy and Zen buddhism and the art forms that they engendered,” explains Singh.
He adds that tantric philosophy and art also exerted a considerable influence on several Indian artists. J Swaminathan was influenced by Jain tantric art in the 1960s and the imagery he employed towards the end of his life is in some ways a return to works from the early 1960s. “Though he personally did not agree with being labelled a neo-tantric artist, Biren De’s works with their central luminous core surrounded by a halo of colour and his use of imagery like mandalas, the lingam and yoni speak of the influences of Hindu or Buddhist tantric thought. In abstraction, along with an absence of form, there is also an absence of interpretation. It is here that Gaitonde’s insistence on the term ‘non-representation’ comes into play. It is as self-explanatory as it is absolute. There must be unequivocally no exemplification of any form or kind. In Shanti Dave’s work, the artist uses encaustic as a material to provide a layered surface on which markings appear like hieroglyphics from some distant past. There can be no easy interpretation for this because no such language exists. These remnants might look like survivors of the ruins from some time past but that extrapolation belongs to the viewer and may not be the intent of the artist,” adds Singh.
One of the major motives of the gallery is to document the richly diverse and less understood aspects of modern Indian art. The exhibition continues till September 30.