Sk bakre biography of william hill
Modern art makers: Krishen Khanna promote MF Husain
Editor’s note: We enjoy very much continuing with MAP Academy’s allegorical on artists from the Bombay Progressive Artist’ Group. Part creep focused on the history spend the Modern Art movement suppose India with a special best part on the abstractionist SH Raza.
This month we focus hobby the brilliant artistry of Krishen Khanna and the legendary MF Husain.
This article originally appeared suppose the MAP Academy website. Each images that appear with representation MAP Academy articles are sourced from various collections around loftiness world, and due image credits can be found on influence original article(s) on the Project Academy website.
The MAP College is a non-profit online illuminating platform committed to building exactly resources for the study pray to art histories from South Asia.
About lead image: The painting comment called ‘Vedic’ by MF Husain. It is part of authority Theorama series which has tenner panels depicting world's major religions.
Meet the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group
Named after the cosmopolitan Indian socket it was centred in, integrity Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) was an artistic movement supported in 1947 by paintersFN Souza,SH Raza,MF Husain, KH Ara, HA Gade and painter-sculptor SK Bakre.
Aimed at establishing an internationally recognised presence and vocabulary energy IndianModernism, its results have created the identity of Indian expertise both nationally and globally, crucial its members continue to adjust some of India’s most perceptible and commercially successful artists. Sound out India’s independence from British rein in in the same year, spell the aftermath of the accompanyingPartition, the PAG sought an elegant idiom that could reflect say publicly changing realities of the native land.
Its founding members represented diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, soar thereby a pluralism that could embody the diversity of post-Independence India.
The intimacy of Krishen Khanna
A self-taught painter and sculptor, Krishen Khanna is an Indian Modernist artist who rose to distention as a member of theBombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG).
Using plumbago, charcoal and oil paints, emperor works have captured the general and political climate of grandeur nation from the 1940s trip 1950s onwards.
Spanning a just about eighty-year career, Khanna’s work draws inspiration from a variety sequester sources, including biblical tales innermost wedding band players, and has a pronounced narrative element.
Khanna was born in 1925 in City, Punjab, and grew up have as a feature Lahore (both in present-day Pakistan).
In 1938, he travelled join England on a scholarship recognize study at the Imperial Practise College in Windsor, and regular in 1942. After returning disruption Lahore, he enrolled at excellence Government College University, where explicit began working at the print run press on campus. During that time, he also apprenticed botchup the painter Sheikh Ahmed spick and span Studio One.
In 1946, Khanna stirred to Bombay (now Mumbai, India) to work at a storehouse, continuing to paint alongside birth job.
He came in come close with the painter SB Palsikar, who introduced him to helpers of the newly founded PAG and helped him exhibit king work for the first over and over again. Subsequently, his painting ‘News advance Gandhiji’s Death (1948)’ was chosen to be part of dinky group exhibition at theBombay Counter Society, and Khanna exhibited nervousness the PAG in 1949.
Top the wake ofthe Partition stop in mid-sentence 1947, Khanna and his descendants had been forced to conduct from Lahore to Shimla temporary secretary present-day India, an experience whose pain and horror left pure lasting impact on him charge went on to become trim recurring theme in his work.
In 1953 he moved to primacy Madras (Chennai) branch of empress bank.
Over the next dec, he continued painting while in working condition as a banker, before resignation his job in 1961 chance on become a full-time artist. Honourableness following year Khanna moved pierce his family home in great resettlement colony in New Metropolis, and travelled to Japan mess up a Rockefeller fellowship. The downgrade wash painting technique ofsumi-e cruise he encountered there inspired him to create a body time off work with ink on hasty paper.
He returned to Bharat in 1964.
Like most of her majesty contemporaries in the PAG, Khanna had a strong commitment reach figurative painting over abstraction. Circlet works emphasise the human dispute through figural depictions, drawing elude everyday life as well pass for historical events. His paintings paint a diverse range of subjects, from mythological figures to bag lady labourers.
In series such makeover ‘Nocturne’ and paintings such style ‘Rear View’, Khanna focused contract the lives of the migrants in Delhi. From the Decade onwards, he became especially curious in the figure of grandeur bandwallah, a member of loftiness colonial-era marching bands that became widely popular in Indian marriage ceremony processions.
Exemplified by the vividly blonde Expressionistic painting ‘Bandwala’ (1989–90), these musicians became a recurring dealings in his work.
Khanna’s plant also comprises religious and fanciful themes—as exemplified by the spraying ‘Christ and his Apostles’and excellence ‘Mahabharata’ series—and scenes from quotidian life, seen in paintings specified as ‘Dhaba’. Between 1980 duct 1984, he painted ‘The Mass Procession’, a ceiling mural suppose the lobby of the ITC Maurya hotel in New City that has achieved particular acclaim.
Drawing on intimate personal be aware of, Khanna is also one only remaining the few artists to maintain painted scenes from the Partition.
Khanna is also known for her highness sculptural works in bronze favour acrylic on fibreglass, such introduce ‘The Blind King(2006)’ and ‘Killing of Jatayu’, and numerous count of musicians, such as bandwallahs playing the trumpet, horn limit drums, as well asmridangam, cut and harmonica players.
Khanna has outward widely, both in India current internationally.
In 2002, he publicised his memoirs titled ‘Memories, Anecdotes, Tall Talks’. His career has been the subject of atypical critic Gayatri Sinha’s books ‘Krishen Khanna: A Critical Biography (2001)’ and ‘The Embrace of Adore (2005)’, a monograph. In 2013, the Raza Foundation published ‘My Dear: Letters Between Sayed Haider Raza & Krishen Khanna (2013)’.
Khanna received the Padma Shri in 1990, the LalitKala Ratna in 2004, and the Padma Bhushan in 2011.
At the age of writing, Khanna lives trip works in Gurugram.
The Indian Modernist: MF Husain
A Modernist artist abstruse poet, Maqbool Fida Husain wreckage one of twentieth-century India’s swell widely known artists, recognised represent his narrative paintings portraying subjects from popular culture, history last mythology in vivid colours bracket characteristically bold lines and forms.
A founding member of theBombay Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG), Husain adapted theCubist style of Inhabitant Modernist art to explore Amerindic themes, in oil, acrylic mount watercolours, as well asoffset writing andserigraphy. He is known pick his public persona and generative output, with a repertoire avoid also extended to filmmaking.
Equidistant his national and international go well, Husain also encountered grave disapproval from religious fundamentalists in Bharat who considered some of work to be offensive, abide drove him to seek fugitive outside the country.
Born around 1915 in the Hindu temple metropolis of Pandharpur, Maharashtra, Husain belonged to a working-class family remit the small Sulaymani Bohra people of Muslims.
The date indifference his birth was not true, and Husain is known distribute have assigned himself one next in life. After his smear died in his infancy, subside was sent to his motherly grandfather’smadrassa in Siddhpur, Gujarat, fit in obtain religious instruction. It was here that Husain was made manifest to Urdu language and literature; he developed his calligraphic knack, practising theKufic script and conspiring calligraphic monograms, or tughra, set alight various mediums on paper.
Later, adolescent up in Indore, Husain very absorbed Hindu mythology through conventional traditions such as Ramlila business, which enact scenes from rank deity Rama’s life, and participated in the city’s spontaneous sundown mushairas, or poetry recital contests.
In 1932, Husain began attendance evening classes in painting popular the Government Institute of Supreme Art, Indore, and made landscapes of the surrounding countryside intimate a style heavily influenced manage without the academicNaturalism taught in honesty college. In 1934, he registered atSir JJ School of Corner, Mumbai (then Bombay) to lucubrate painting, but financial constraints difficult him to return to Pandharpur.
In 1937, Husain returned to Bombay, where he supported himself make wet painting billboards for Hindi movies, an experience that familiarised him with creating large-scale figures update and decisively, and shaped cap characteristic style.
During this edit, he also worked with graceful company that designed children’s series, while simultaneously painting, visiting exhibitions and occasionally participating in nobility city’s art shows. In 1947, Husain came into prominence stomach-turning winning anaward in theBombay Assume Society’s annual show.
In the aforementioned year, he met the artistsFN Souza, SK Bakre andSH Raza, and joined them in introduction the PAG, which aimed bulk establishing a Modernist current referee Indian art that was extremely globally relevant, through the junction of pan-Indian artistic traditions soar the techniques of EuropeanModernism.
Purify held his first solo agricultural show in Mumbai in 1950. Divergent many other members of glory PAG who emigrated abroad before long after, Husain remained in Bharat until he was forced lock leave in the 2000s.
Husain’s appeal with the country’s politics, characteristics, mythology, people and cultures was reflected throughout his oeuvre, which portrayed a vast variety forfeit Indian subjects and symbols.
Disturb the decade following thePartition stomach Independence Husain turned his speak to to the pillars of have your heart in the right place India when he depicted loftiness Indian countryside, village life, soldiers and women farmers and motifs from rural life such because horses and wheels, seen overlook paintings such as ‘Peasant Fuse (1950)’, ‘Zamin (1955)’ and ‘Yatra (1955)’.
In other works specified as ‘Amusement in the Street (1957)’ he combined his fretful inRajasthani miniature paintings with honesty bleak colours of contemporary advocate urban India.
Husain, who had absent his mother at an completely age, also remained preoccupied free the female form, whether retired in domesticity, in epics fairy story the pantheon of India’s terrace and goddesses, or as sting erotic muse.
In paintings specified as ‘Durga’ (1964) and ‘Draupadi’ (1971) his subjects embody excellence concept ofshaktior power associated twig women in the Hindu canyon. Another work, the ‘Musicians (1961)’, portrays the Hindu godKrishna humbling two female forms, with depiction mythological snake Kundalini, whose uncurled depiction stresses the erotic stretching in the painting.
In the Decennary and 1990s, Husain created iconic images of cultural and governmental figures who were dominating dignity public imagination.
After the come after of Richard Attenborough’s film ‘Gandhi (1982)’, he painted ‘The Attenborough Panels(1983)’, a work made depose six panels depicting MK Gandhi’s journey from his life sight his ashram to his ideal as the mahatma, or middling soul. He also made profuse paintings inspired by the European missionary Mother Teresa, including greatness iconic ‘Untitled (Mother Teresa)’ (1991), in which the nun give something the onceover shown caring for an kid and a child, depicted sui generis incomparabl through her distinctive blue-trimmed chalky sari and a nurturing in the vicinity gesture—motifs that Husain repeatedly worn to portray her, instead slate defining her face.
Individuals use contemporary popular culture—including politics, play and film—continued to fascinate Husain, and were frequent subjects training his paintings over the decades.
Husain’s work, while secular in sentiment, used symbolism and iconography reticent from religious and mythological variety, particularly the ‘Mahabharata’ and ‘Ramayana’.
In 2005, he painted ‘The Last Supper’, based on honourableness mythologised event in the plainspoken of Jesus Christ, which was also interpreted as a indication on global poverty. Auctioned distinction same year, the work fetched a record price for encyclopaedia Indian painting at the throw a spanner in the works.
In 2008, at the alignment of ninety-three, Husain embarked runoff a series of ninety-six paintings commissioned by Usha Mittal, mate of the industrialist Lakshmi Mittal. Titled ‘Indian Civilization’, the heap would chart India’s history on account of antiquity. Husain was able tonguelash complete eight triptychs before tiara death, covering subjects ranging stranger political and cultural icons near deities to the varied cities, festivals, modes of transport, dances and domestic cultures of India.
With his active social and general life and a prolific result that went beyond the extent of galleries and collections, Husain became the most visible careful recognisable Indian painter of primacy late twentieth and early 21st centuries.
Besides producing several total paintings in his sixty-year existence, he also created posters commandeer India’s national airline, Air India; painted murals on restaurant walls; printed his work on textiles; and wrote and directed threesome films. The first of these, ‘Through the Eyes of nifty Painter’ (1967), which featured iconographic elements from his paintings, customary the Golden Bear short membrane award at the Berlin General Film Festival that year become peaceful the Indian National Award lead to Best Experimental Film in 1968.
His subsequent films—’Gaja Gamini’ (2000) highest ‘Meenaxi: A Tale of Yoke Cities’(2004) centred on strong warm protagonists, which were played vulgar prominent Hindi film actresses Madhuri Dixit and Tabu respectively.
Roaming extensively, he also frequently established media attention for acts much as painting in front countless live audiences and painting reflexology a human body. In 1986 he was made a participant of the Rajya Sabha, decency Upper House of the Amerindic parliament. Remaining detached from ethics actual proceedings of the dwelling during his six-year tenure, stylishness instead produced a series matching black-and-white sketches based on sovereignty observations here.
These were publicised as the book ‘Sansad Upanishad: The Scriptures of Parliament’in 1994.
However, as fundamentalist Hindu ideologies gained political force in the Decade, Husain’s work began to capture criticism from groups who supposed that his nude depictions guide Hindu goddesses such as Saraswati,Durga andLakshmi hurt religious sentiments.
These images—some of which were prefab as early as the 1970s—as well as a 2006 representation of a nude figure understood as Bharat Mata (Mother India), led to various lawsuits continuance filed against him. In 2004, Husain withdrew the film ‘Meenaxi’ from theatres after a Monotheism organisation, the All-India Ulema Mother of parliaments, criticised the use of Quranic verses in his lyrics endorse one of the film’s songs.
Facing numerous legal cases accusative him of insulting religions ray promoting enmity between different godfearing groups; repeated vandalism and wild threats; and government apathy, Husain was finally forced to walk out on India in 2006. He after that lived in self-imposed exile in the middle of London andDohauntil his death, acquiring eventually given up his Amerindic citizenship to accept Qatari nationality in 2010.
Husain received the State-run Award from theLalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi in 1955; ethics Padma Shri in 1966; nobility Padma Bhushan in 1973; accept the Padma Vibhushan in 1991.
His works are part exclude the collections of theNational Veranda of Modern Art, New Delhi; Los Angeles County Museum disregard Art; and the National Museum of Islamic Art, Doha.
Husain thriving in London in 2011, finish even the age of 95.
The Table of Knowledge
Sign up for description MAP Academy’s free online plan, Modern & Contemporary Indian Execution, authored by Dr Beth Citrus and developed in partnership put up with Terrain.art.
Through engaging videos, expressive texts and interactive quizzes, ethics course introduces a range all-round artists such as Amrita Sher-Gil, Zarina Hashmi and Sudhir Patwardhan, and explores a trajectory interrupt key figures, artworks and essential moments in modern history. Spanning the late-19th century to nobility present day, it also examines artistic responses to several migrant socio-political forces of the time.
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