POST-INDEPENDENCE CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ART
Selections from the Sunanda and Umesh Gaur Collection
An exhibition of 21 paintings and drawings designed to promote awareness and appreciation of contemporary Indian art.
One of the earliest modernist artists in India to make the frontal nude, Souza often rebelled against hypocritical social mores by confronting us with voluptuous sexuality. Thus the woman in the act of baring herself, also unclothed the debris of existence. here the figure is like an ogress who has revealed her violent self entirely, but nonetheless her monuemental stature could be of an archaic mother-goddess. The dual existence of evil and perfection, which personified Souza's view of women are prevalent in this work.
WOMAN UNDRESSING
Newton Souza Oil on Canvas, 64" x 44" Francis
MAN WITH PIECE OF PAPER
Jogen Chowdhury is renowned for his unique style of bent fingers, lumpy wrinkled bodies, and textured skin. No less significant are his emotionally charged motifs such as nude elderly couples interacting, anthropomorphic Ganesh, a sunflowers growing in tiny pots. While most of his work is assigned social or political meaning, some are personal statements and artist's memories, like this man with a paper, that are perplexing and open to interpretation.
DIAGONAL SERIES
Tyeb Mehta Oil on Canvas, 35 1/2" x 45 1/4"
Tyeb Mehta visited the United States in the early 1960s as a Rockefeller fellow. On his return to India, he introduced a notably different style into his art - largely flat color masses and figures, rendered with a remarkable economy of line. The distinctive feature of these paintings in the introduction of the diagonal that fractures and splits the images and the canvas into two parts. Arguably, the diagonal of Mehta severs and mutilates his figures. Typically heavy torsos and attenuated limbs of the female figure are split and then encased in the pervading field of color. Mehta uses the dynamic interplay of form and color, the hard-edged color masses and the broken, seemingly tentative line of the figure to create a pervasive sense of conflict and irresolution. To the extent that the artist uses color masses to create disjunction within his figures, the diagonal serves to reinforces a sense of the existential isolation of his forms
Francis Newton Souza's main achievement lay in reconstructing the human face to reveal the undercurrents of both corruption and decay in society. Often his heads were depraved religious heads or of the affluent class, who manipulated power according to their own unscrupulous needs. He devised the head with icy cold eyes which replaced the forehead, gnashing fang-like teeth and a flickering, mobile visage. Often hatchings replaced facial characteristics and conveyed the death of soul. The red colored jumper interlocks with the deep purple of the painting to highlight the immobilized whiteness of the head.
RED JUMPER
Newton Souza Oil on Board, 40" x 24" Francis