Vinod Dave among India’s Rockefeller Artists: An Indo-U.S. Cultural Saga is a new exhibition by DAG in Mumbai, which is showcasing iconic works by some of India's greatest painters.

Art for Art’s sake is the unravelling and sharing of art for the sheer joy of it. And that pleasure increases multifold when the setting compliments that sentiment. At their gallery sitting in a heritage building of the beautiful Kala Ghoda in the Fort Area of Mumbai, DAG held a private viewing last night of its new exhibition ‘India’s Rockefeller Artists: An Indo-U.S. Cultural Saga’.  

Art enthusiasts take a look at the painting displayed at DAG Kala Ghoda

 

Over enriching conversations, mocktails and canapés, special invitees feasted their eyes on a wide array of paintings and a few sculptures. Tyeb Mehta’s seminal work ‘Gesture’ held centrestage along with the spellbinding ‘Evasion’, which was legendary SH Raza’s abstract attempt to eradicate the memory of his homeland India during his long years of living in France. 

A very unique ‘Untitled’ on display by another legend Akbar Padamsee is the study of a supine nude, as he delineates the forms contours, deliberately leaving out the face. Asleep and its face left blank, it turns resolutely away from the viewer into a private space, declining any engagement.   

A mixed-media work "Hawks of a Dreamland" by Vinod Dave

 

The exhibition which is open for general viewing and is open to all between November 29, 2018, and February 16, 2019, basically showcases iconic works of the Indian painters and sculptors who travelled to the US on grants enabled by John D. Rockefeller III’s philanthropic vision, first through the JDR 3rd Fund (1963–1979) and then through the Asian Cultural Council.

In the US, these artists saw, observed, assimilated and understood the American palette and shared their own learnings and experiences through a cultural exchange. 

The show examines why and how these artists were selected; their relationships with each other and the American art milieu; the impact of the experience on their body of work; and the creation of a community of Rockefeller artists.

 "A Still Life with Parrot" by Jyoti Bhatt

The grant benefitted some of India’s most important artists, whose work has been put on show at the exhibition. Among them is VS Gaitonde, whose work formed the subject of a retrospective at the Guggenheim, New York, in 2013; Tyeb Mehta, one of the most widely collected artists in private and public collections, Bhupen Khakhar, who was the subject of a retrospective at Tate Modern, in 2016; Natvar Bhavsar - his works proved to be a major draw at Art Shanghai 2018; Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, Bal Chhabda and Krishen Khanna, all associates of the then Bombay-based Progressive Artists’ Group.  

Jyoti Bhatt, K. G. Subramanyan, A. M. Davierwala, Avinash Chandra, Arun Bose, Paritosh Sen, KS Kulkarni, Vinod Dave, Bhupen Khakhar and Rekha Rodwittiya are some of the others whose select works can be seen.

Untitled  by Parotosh Sen

This exhibition is accompanied by a 500-page publication. A product of extensive research from the Rockefeller and artists’ archives, the documentation includes interviews with the living artists and surviving family members of others, along with rare photographs. Published by DAG, the catalogue tells the stories of India’s Rockefeller artists and their art as a testimony to JDR III’s impact on the Indian art landscape.

"The City is Not Burning" by K G Subramanyan

DAG was established as a private art gallery in 1993 in New Delhi. Over the past 25 years, DAG has built a quality collection of artworks that represent the expanse of Indian works from the seventeenth century onwards. Its extensive collection over the past two decades also charts a historic continuum, from the early works of academic artists trained in Bengal and Bombay, to modernists from Baroda, Delhi and beyond.