Akin to its name, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s ongoing exhibition, Purvaee (meaning: The Eastern Wind), curated by Avijna Bhattacharya, celebrates the history of art pedagogy in 19th- and 20th-century India, originating from the creative, cultural and intellectual forces of the Tagore family and the Santiniketan school in Bengal (established in 1919).
Heading the artistic lineages represented is Nandalal Bose, whose 1943 Japanese woodblock print, “Sati”, also concludes the show. Bose’s vast oeuvre presented landscapes and human figures through a new visual vocabulary that struck a balance between indigenous traditions of art and foreign interventions. The location of his practice alongside old masters and contemporary figures establishes his omnipresence as an artist-teacher who ensured Bengal’s long-lasting influences on modern Indian art across several decades and generations. Bose’s students, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, also played an important role in this regard, revisiting his formal and stylistic borrowings from the Far East, the ancient art of Ajanta, and Abanindranath’s Bengal School, while accommodating their individual experimental touches. The exhibition gives special attention to the fluid and unconventional nature of Baij’s paintings and sculptures, which set the tone for artistic and national independence. The displays also bring in works by later students of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, who were exposed to significant local and international art movements. Among them are the abstract sculptures of Sankho Chaudhuri and Sarbari Roy Chowdhury, and paintings by Krishna Reddy and A. Ramachandran.
Another prominent presence is K.G. Subramanyan, whose works and interactions with his mentors, colleagues and students helped carry the eastern winds to the western reaches of the country. Through Subramanyan, the exhibition starts to explore the Santiniketan school’s ties with the fine arts department at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, started in 1950, which had an equally crucial impact on modern and contemporary Indian art. This section features Mrinalini Mukherjee, who grew up in Santiniketan and later trained under Subramanyan at Baroda. Her works serve as a melting point between Santiniketan’s nature-based expression and Baroda’s methodological and narrative approaches. In a similar vein is the practice of K.P. Krishnakumar, who too straddled the worlds of these two places. Krishnakumar’s art is more overtly political, imbued with his radical upbringing in Kerala’s Leftist society, and engages with class consciousness, the treachery of social systems, the struggles of the working class, and the treatment meted out to the marginalized.
The Baroda school also features Pushpamala N.’s vivid dramatized depiction of the Sita Apaharana episode from the Ramayana. Presented alongside is Manisha Gera Baswani’s incision-based works, which capture the jaali’s architectural features and the meditative quality of light streaming through. Bhagat Singh’s art continues his mentor A. Ramachandran’s celebrations of nature through a vibrant kaleidoscopic palette. Coming up to more recent times, Vasudevan Akkitham’s Almanac of a Lost Year (2020-2021) consists of 360 miniature-like watercolour paintings that document a day each in the first year of the Covid pandemic. The displays weave in tales of isolation, loneliness, nostalgia and grief, reflecting a period caught between limbo and flux.
Looking at intersecting lives and artistic associations between Santiniketan and Baroda, mainly from the 1940s to the 2000s, the exhibition pieces together a short survey and archive of fourteen well-known names in the annals of Indian art. Gathered largely from KNMA’s own collection, the focus is bent more heavily towards Santiniketan, given its older history and longer legacy. The curation aims to move beyond conventional region-based categorizations and chronological structures to juxtapose and place in conversation artworks from different periods. However, given the mention of “pedagogic lineages” within the subtitle, it would help to have had more details about the teaching methods and institutional practices that also shaped, connected and distinguished the mentorships, schools and careers covered.
Purvaee: Evoking Pedagogic Lineages is on view at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, from September 13 to December 15, 2024.