Historical Developement of Contemporary Indian Art: 1880-1947

Historical Development of Contemporary Indian Art covers the period from late nineteenth century when Raja Ravi Varma had flourished until the Independence of India in 1947. The scope of the material to be covered was the parallel manifestations in pictorial-visual arts of several regions of the whole country. This has been the period of what the editors call ‘art-turmoil’, which includes both breakdown as well as rediscovery of our rich art tradition at a point when European aesthetic norms were introduced. This conflict between indigenous and western modes leads to further conflict when Indian artists confronted first waves of modern movement of European Art. Accordingly the editors proposed the tripartite structure and placement of various regions in a time-line sequence within each section of the book. The authors were approached to document art manifestations of their region revealing continuation of tradition on one hand and also the setting up of art schools and impact of European style art training resulting in a new mode which we gave the nomenclature of ‘Naturalism’. Accordingly the first section covers the naturalistic phase in Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bengal, Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil-Nadu. The second section is devoted to the intellectual and creative churning that took place at the beginning of the twentieth century when traditional art is rediscovered and re-absorbed in fresh creative ventures which is widely accepted as ‘Revivalism’. These regional responses to the spirit of ‘Revival’, is a belated but a glorious culminating phase of India’s ‘Renaissance’ during the colonial rule. Such regional involvements and initiatives also resulted in conflict between tradition and European modes, which served as the ground or base for the emergence of the first phase of modernity that saga is covered in the third section.