UNIT : 3 – The Modern Trends in Indian Art

Modern Indian art showcases a blend of traditional themes and contemporary techniques, reflecting the dynamic nature of India’s artistic scene. This unit delves into the important contributions made in painting, graphic prints, and sculpture, featuring the works of celebrated artists such as Raja Ravi Varma, Jamini Roy, Amrita Sher-Gil, M.F. Husain, Somnath Hore, and Ramkinkar Baij.

These remarkable pieces explore a range of themes, including mythology, everyday life, social issues, and abstract concepts. Gaining an understanding of these artworks offers valuable insights into India’s rich cultural and artistic heritage, making them a vital component of CBSE Class 12 Fine Arts studies.

Modern Painting And Artists

During British era literature, science and arts were developing with new techniques in almost all branches of artistic activities. The movement of modern painting originated in Calcutta (Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) and has spread to all parts of India.

India’s first nationalist art school, Kala Bhavana, was set up in 1919 as part of the newly established Visva-Bharati University in Shantiniketan, conceptualised by poet Rabindranath Tagore. Artists approach to painting and the style he chosen depends on his own personality and on the influence of the times in which they live.

These art schools tended to promote traditional Indian crafts, and academic and naturalist art that reflected Victorian tastes.

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Artists During Modern Art Time

Abanindranath Tagore from Bengal, develop and Indigenous style of painting and built- up Bengal School along with his disciples like Nand Lal Bose, Vinod Bihari, Sharada Ukil and other.
Gaganindranath Tagore, after 1925, rejected the traditionalism of Bengal school and he tried cubistic painting influenced by European Cubism.
- His paintings of mysterious halls and rooms were made with vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines, which were quite different from the Cubist style of famous artist Pablo Picasso, who invented the style using geometrical facets.
Rabindranath Tagore, the famous poet started paintings at the age of 67 and blocks the expressionist in his painting. Rabindranath Tagore in his painting focuses on expressionism.
- He would often make patterns out of doodles and developed a unique, calligraphic style out of crossed out words. Some of these were turned into human faces and landscapes, which floated captivatingly in his poems.
- Rabindranath created a small visual world that was a complete departure from the more elegant and delicate style of the Bengal School, which often drew inspiration from Mughal and Pahari miniatures along with Ajanta frescoes.
Raja Ravi Verma a self tought painter of south(Kerala), was first Indian painter who trained in the western technique of oil painting and depicted subject based on Indian mythology and classical literature.
Jamini Roy started painting in the style of Kalighat Pata painting. He followed the glowing colour, flowing curves and bold line of this style. Also rediscover the beauty of folk art and redefined it into modern art.
- He rejected his own training received at the Government School of Art, Calcutta. Being a student of Abanindranath Tagore, he realized the futility of pursuing academic art. He noticed that the rural, folk art in Bengal had much in common with how modern European masters like Picasso and Paul Klee painted.
- Roy, too, used simple and pure colours. Like village artists, he also made his own colours from vegetables and minerals.
- Roy signed on his paintings.
Amrita Shergil, half Hungarian and half Indian, emerges as a unique female artist in the Indian art scene in 1930. Amrita Shergil received her art education from Paris and had a first-hand experience in European modern art trends, such as Impressionism and post– Impressionism. She worked to develop art with Indian themes and images. Amrita Sher-Gil assimilated miniature and mural traditions of Indian art with European modernism. She painted beautiful canvases in her 28 years short life span.
Ramkinkar Baij at Shantiniketan started modelling sculpture and painting in an expressionistic way.
- Ramkinkar Baij was an artist given to the celebration of nature. His art reflects his everyday experiences.
- For instance, his Santhal Family, made as an outdoor sculpture within the Kala Bhavana compound, turned the daily activity of a Santhal family setting out for work into a larger than a life size piece of art.
Devi Prasad Roy Choudhary brought bronze casting technique and made sculpture in European style influenced by Rodin.
- Had had used academic realism to celebrate the labour of working classes, for example “The Triumph of Labour”.
M.F. Hussain is one of the most versatile artist of that phase. He played a role to develop modern Indian art In International platform.
Well known painters and sculptors artist and graphic print artists of these modern phase are N. S. Bendre, B. C. Sanyal, F. N. Souza , Dhanraj Bhagat, Amarnath Sehgal and many other.
From early 1940s to the first decade of the Post independence era the young painters put in the conscious effort to create an art form which was deeply rotate in the Indian soil was also capable of reflecting the voice of social change. They represented the lives of common people used popular folk symbols in their art.

CBSE Class 12 Fine Art NCERT Textbook

Modern Paintings

(very important table)

(i) Rama Vanquishing the Pride of the Ocean

Artist – Raja Ravi Verma
School – Modern school
Medium – Oil on canvas (Painting)

Description–
This painting is an episode from Balmiki’s Ramayana. After preparing his force for invading Lanka to recover Sita, Rama was held up by the sea. Attempts to build a bridge were washed out by the ocean. Rama threatened to destroy Varuna, the god of ocean. Varuna and his consort rush forward to pacify the angry Rama.
In this painting Raja Ravi Verma has shown his ability to capture movement and motions of his composition on the principle of dynamic balance.

Rama’s posture and fluctuating drapery suggest wind blowing from the ocean.

The solid rocks in the foreground provide in contrast to the smooth surface of the ocean. The vertical form of Rama builds efforts of bravery and strength. Rama is shown standing with bow and arrow. A lightning is shown beautifully on the dark background.

Collection – Chitrashala, Mysore

(ii) Mother and child

Artist – Jamini Roy
School – Modern school
Medium – Oil on canvas (Painting)

Description–

Jamini Roy is among those artists who painted independently without being impressed by Bengal school and introduced a new and modern style in India. His new experiments were based on folk art of Bengal specially the Kalighat Pata painting.

In this vertical composition he has immortalized motherhood by drawing mother and child as Yashoda & Krishna. The space is nicely filled with figure and other objects. Lady is shown holding a child with her left arm on the left side of her waist. Faces are cup shaped; eyes are elongated like fish shaped with thick eyebrows.

Mother’s head is tilted towards her child. The child is totally naked while the mother is wearing a saree. Both mother and child are decorated with ornaments. The folk motives in the background captured the simplicity of local and rural life Mother is wearing dark brown saree with border. Brown colour is dominant in the painting.
The use of yellow Ochre is also very beautiful. White colour is used for ornaments and flowers and working as high light .

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(iii) Haldi Grinders

Artist – Amrita Shergil
School– Modern school
Medium– Oil on canvas (Painting)

Description–
Amrita Shergil had great empathy and fascination for rural, poor and authentic India. This painting is a very honest depiction of the domestic Indian household. It shows women doing a routine work of grinding turmeric. Here we see the view through two thick trunks the two women sitting sideways in profile and grinding on a stone grinder. Their heads are covered and faces are dark with no emphasis on facial features. There is a young girl sitting next to them with turmeric seeds. One more head is visible at the far end of the composition which is again veiled and obscure.

The female forms are simplified and abstract in a very modern style. The trees specially the details of leaves carry the influence of Indian painting that she encountered after coming to India. Hence this painting is in extraordinary mix of eastern and western art. Amrita’s colour are flat and entirely with intense of red, yellow occur, brown, yellow and green.

Collection- National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(iv) Mother Teresa

Artist – M.F. Hussain
School– Modern school
Medium– Oil on canvas (Painting)

Description–
This painting has been depicted through Teresa has been depicted through her flowing drapes of the blue bordered white saree instead of her portrait. On one side of the saree she is giving shelter to a girl, who is representing the orphan homeless child. On the other side a sick person is lying on her knee, where as another figure is sleeping on the lap of Mother Teresa. Mother Teresa’s right palm is rise in the form of blessing. Husain’s lines are sharp and full of expression. Mostly colours are flat light and dark tones can be seen at few places.

Collection- National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

Graphic Prints & Modern Sculpture

Introduction Of Graphic Print

Printmaking is a process of production of artworks of the original one. Each product print is not a copy but considered an original artwork. Print making techniques are generally divided into different categories like Woodcut, Linocuts, Etching and Aquatint, Dry point, Lithography, Seriography, Mono print, Digital print etc.

Woodcut And Linocut

It is a type of relief printmaking technique on which artist make the art work and take the reprint of the same as reverse of the drawing.
Linocut – Woodcut and wood engraving are all types of relief printing processes, in which a piece of linoleum or block of wood is carved so that the image stands out in relief. The raised parts that are not cut away are inked with a brayer (a hand-roller) and printed. A sheet of dampened paper is then placed over the block and firm pressure applied so that the inked surface is transferred to the paper.

Woodcut – For a woodcut, the wood is sawn along the grain so that it can be carved quite easily with a knife-like tool. Wood engraving is slightly different and uses end grain wood, which is very hard. As this is more difficult to cut, the lines are incised into the woodblock with a sharp metal tool, meaning the image can be much more detailed. Wood engravings are usually also smaller than woodcuts due to them being restricted to the diameter of the tree trunk.

Etching And Aquatint

In etching a metal plate specially zinc plate is processed by nitric acid and use of an etching needle to create the image on the plate and take the print out by the help of printing press.

Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. Etching has often been combined with other intaglio techniques such as engraving (e.g., Rembrandt) or aquatint (e.g., Francisco Goya).

Dry Point

This is a type of engraving done with a sharp needle and creates the drawing on a fibre sheet and then the print taken from that fibber sheet through the press.

Dry point is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or “matrix”) with a hard-pointed “needle” of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically identical to engraving. The difference is in the use of tools, and that the raised ridge along the furrow is not scraped or filed away as in engraving. Like etching, dry point is easier to master than engraving for an artist trained in drawing because the technique of using the needle is closer to using a pencil than the engraver’s burin.

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Lithography

The image is drawn on a limestone generally known as “litho stone”; with litho pencil and glue is applied on. After that stone is formatted in acid and the stone is ready for print.

Lithography is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water.The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps.

Seriography

It creates prints by using a fabric stencil technique. Ink is forced through a fine screen onto the paper beneath. Screen printing is a printing technique where a mesh is used to transfer ink onto a substrate, except in areas made impermeable to the ink by a blocking stencil. A blade or squeegee is moved across the screen to fill the open mesh apertures with ink, and a reverse stroke then causes the screen to touch the substrate momentarily along a line of contact. This causes the ink to wet the substrate and be pulled out of the mesh apertures as the screen springs back after the blade has passed.

One colour is printed at a time, so several screens can be used to produce a multi-coloured image or design.

Mono Print

It is a form of printmaking which creates the impact and impression of print on a single metrics.
Monoprinting is a type of printmaking where the intent is to make unique prints, that may explore an image serially. Other methods of printmaking create editioned multiples, the monoprint is editioned as 1 of 1.

GRAPHIC – PRINT PAINTINGS

(Very Important Table)

(i) Children

Artist – Somnath Hore
School – Modern School (Graphic Print)
Medium – Etching and Aquatint (Graphic Print)
Subject Matter – Somnath Hore’s monochromatic etching with aquatint features images of children from the 1943 Bengal Famine, a lasting impression he left on his early sketches and drawings. Hore’s line drawings followed representational contours and tonal devices.

Description –
Somnath Hore has created many works representing hungry children with their mother. This etching also shows two children with bloated stomach and thin ribs are shown with liner effect.

Their mother is standing behind them and has put her protective hand on their shoulder. Suitable tones of mild blue, grey and black used for the theme of under nurtured children who represent the existence of poor in a depressed society. This graphic print is showing the human life value of our society.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(ii) Devi

Artist – Jyoti Bhatt
School – Modern School (Graphic Print)
Medium – Etching and Intaglio (Graphic Print)
Subject Matter – Jyoti Bhatt, a 1970s artist, created an etching on paper based on folk traditions and popular practices. His works balance space tradition and modernity, incorporating traditional forms into contemporary dynamics. The print features Devi’s pictorial image, a woman’s frontal face, and folk motifs.

Description –
This print represents the concept of fertility and power worship as Devi. The form of kundalini encircles the female fertility power. In the lower section of print provides an overall frame to the entire composition. Deep etching within intaglio in black provides an interesting texture to the serpentine form. The forehead of Devi is decorated with a brilliant vermillion dot. The Devi has wide open eyes is a typical feature of Durga image of Bengal.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(iii) Of Walls

Artist – Anupam Sood
School – Modern School (Graphic Print)
Medium – Lithography (Graphic Print)
Subject Matter – Anupam Sood, a printmaker from India, created an etching in 1982 from zinc plate and paper, focusing on social problems faced by marginalized communities and artistic understanding of their reality.

Description –
Anupam Sood used her perfect craftsmanship and understanding of anatomy to create composition in which figures are playing a prominent role. Off Wall is a lithograph print taken by the help of the limestone in which a woman form is sitting under a wall and on the foreground a male lower limb has been drawn. This print is showing the humanity, emotions, life value and internal feeling of human being. The wall is printed in brown colour and line drawing of folk paintings is drawn in the wall in white colour.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(iv) Man, Woman and Tree

Artist – K. Laxma Goud
School – Modern School (Graphic Print)
Medium – Lithography (Graphic Print)
Subject Matter – K. Laxman Goud, influenced by visual traditions, classical, folk, and popular cultures, blurred lines between major and minor arts, allowing him to explore mediums like glass painting, terracotta, and bronze.

Description –
This vertical graphic print is having four trees in background. While in the foreground on left side a woman is sitting under the tree wearing a nose ring and a necklace. She is looking towards the man, who is opposite to her appearing under the trees and looking at her. light blue and green colours are used to create this print. Green coloured bushes are drawn at the front of the composition.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

S. No	Topic	Link
1	The Rajasthani Schools of Painting	Click Here
2	The Pahari Schools of Painting	Click Here
3	The Mughal School of Miniature Painting	Click Here
4	The Deccan Schools of Painting	Click Here
5	The Bengal School of Painting	Click Here
6	The Modern Trends in Indian Art	Click Here

MODERN SCULPTURE

Modern Sculpture Paintings

(Very Important Table)

(i) Triumph of Labour

Artist – D.P. Rai Chowdhury
School – Modern School (Sculpture)
Medium – Bronze and Cement (Modern Sculpture)
Subject Matter – It shows four men trying to move a rock, rendering the importance and contribution of human labour in nation building. The image of group labour is placed on a high pedestal, thereby, replacing the notion of portraits of kings or British dignitaries.

Description –
This is sculpture is displayed in front of the National Gallery of Modern Art and can be seen by passing through main road of India Gate. In this sculpture four labours are engaged in a task of moving a block of stone with the help of wooden logs. All the labours are wearing only loin cloths and two of them have covered their heads with a piece of cloth. These labours are working in a hilly area. Through this sculpture the artist has conveyed the idea of united efforts that can move any blockade. This sculpture is showing the human life values.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(ii) Santhal Family

Artist – Ramkinkar Baij
School – Modern School (Sculpture)
Medium – Cement and Concrete (Modern Sculpture)
Subject Matter – The significance of this work is that it is regarded as the first public modernist sculpture in India which speaks of the family migrating from one region to another, carrying all their frugal possessions. ( The material of which it is made of is important. The artist has avoided traditional medium like marble, wood or stone, and has preferred cement, the symbol of modernisation.)

Description –
Rough textured group of Santhal Family with its multiple figures and strong movement is shown in this sculpture. In this composition a male and a female figure is standing side by side with walking action, a dog with them and a child is seating on a front side basket hanging from the balancing rod. The backside basket of the balancing rod is filled with some household material. The female is walking beside the man has carried the load on her head and carried her child in her left waist. It is an entire family in migration. This roadside sculpture is placed on a rough textured land of Santiniketan and made with graves, cement and red clay of that area which are easily available.

Collection – Viswa Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal

(iii) Cries Un – heard

Artist – Amarnath Sehgal
School – Modern School (Sculpture)
Medium – Bronze (Modern Sculpture)
Subject Matter – Amarnath Sahgal’s 1958 bronze sculpture features three stick-like figures in flat rhythmical planes, resembling a family. The work can be seen as socialist, paying homage to millions of destitute families whose cries are ignored, highlighting their need for help.

Description –
There are three standing figure of a family with their gloomy faces showing agony and distress. Man, woman and a child stand with their hands raised upwards. these figures are simplified and almost primitive simplicity gives an element of strength to this sculpture. The sculpture has suggested the cries op suffering human by making hollowness in their heads. Made mask like faces keep appearing again and again in the sculpture of Amarnath Sehgal, which is showing the human life values.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

(iv) Ganesha

Artist – P.V. Janakiram
School – Modern School (Sculpture)
Medium – Wire, Tin, Oxidised Copper (Modern Sculpture)
Subject Matter – P. V. Janakiram’s 1970 oxidised copper sculpture features linear silhouettes, rhythm, growth, and lyrical stylisation, blending folk and traditional craftsmanship, despite its volume and focus on linearity.

Description –
This sculpture of Ganesha is made of metal, tin and copper wire. In this sculpture, Ganesha is in dancing posture. His left foot is down and right is folded near the knee of left leg. He is holding a Lotus bud in his right upper hand. The upper left hand he is holding an engraver and he is playing a veena by his other two hands. Mostly the sculpture is completed different designs of wire.

Collection – National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi

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