What a turnout! The Art of India opening rocked on Friday evening with Delhi’s collectors, artists, socialites, art lovers, and even children showing up to celebrate the incredibly diverse collection mounted at Bikaner House.
The invitation was from 6 to 8pm but the buzzy party continued long after 9pm.
It wasn’t just the art that was diverse but also the audience.
Kanan Kishore, 11, and Leela, 7, may not have grasped the complexities of SH Raza’s abstract artworks but they sure had their favourites at TOI’s The Art of India exhibition. While Kanan could not get enough of Ajay De’s surreal cityscape rendered in charcoal, Leela stared into the eye of the tiger on Sushma Jain’s lifelike canvas. “I like animals so this one is my favourite,” says the young Leela, explaining her pick from the smorgasbord of colours, shapes, materials on display at the exhibition which moved to Delhi after tasting success in Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
From walk-in art students queuing up to scan QR codes on an AI-enabled exhibit of a gloriously painted cricket bat to the crowd surrounding senior artist-couple Madhvi and Manu Parekh, recently in the news for collaborating with the House of Dior to push the boundaries of fashion, they were all there.
Curated by Dr Tarana Khubchandani, director of Gallery Art & Soul in Mumbai, and mentored by Brinda Miller, artist and chairperson of the Kala Ghoda Association, the Delhi collection features more than 100 artworks encompassing creative expressions in painting, drawing, print-making, sculpture, ceramics, photographs, video, digital and print-media artworks. Featuring artists spanning eight decades, the AOI show highlights prominent Bengal Masters as well as celebrating foundational modernists of postcolonial India such as Akbar Padamsee, Jeram Patel, Prabhakar Barwe and Ram Kumar, among others.
“Tarana and I had just two months to put the show together. But the Delhi response has been fantastic and we are overwhelmed,” says Miller. “When The Times of India, one of the oldest media houses in the country, gets into an art initiative, you know that it’s not just important, it’s also about upholding and supporting the arts,” says art critic Uma Nair.
There are stories within stories to explore at AOI — from famed ceramicist Adil Writer putting together the navagrahas famous in the temples of the south into a mosaic of human faces to the formidable Garuda sculpture in copper by Satish Gupta placed at the entrance, from Sanjay Bhattacharya’s rendering of the divinity of Krishna with his flute to 94-year-old post-war artist Naval Jijina, from machine-made menace overrunning pochampally ikat sarees in Telangana by Laxman Aelay to a play on ‘The Two Fridas’ with a selfportrait by Lalitha Lajmi who passed away in February at the age of 90.
The works that Delhi-based artist Satish Gupta, who is known for his monumental copper sculptures, brought to AOI had a certain meditative quality to them. “I like scale and working with the elements. I want to bring awareness about the effects of climate change,” says Gupta who has, in the past, created a 1. 6-km-long calligraphic canvas on the beach in Puducherry toraise awareness of global warming. His work is in prestigious private collections such as that of Nita Ambani and Kumar Mangalam Birla. One of the canvases on display at AOI was created live to the voice of the famed singer Mahesh Vinayakram. “It was spontaneous. I brought my paper and my big brushes and started painting as he sang,” says Gupta, who has titled this work ‘Dance of the brush’. Little wonder that it struck a chord with viewers.
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