Modern Trends in Indian Art

About this unit

After the Bengal School, Indian artists explored many new directions. Some combined Indian subjects with modern European styles, some returned to folk and tribal art, and some turned to abstraction and symbolism. Groups such as the Progressive Artists' Group of Bombay (1947), the Madras school and the Baroda school became important. Sculptors experimented with new materials, and printmaking grew into a major art form. The unit also covers the basic elements and principles of visual art used to analyse any work.

Key ideas

• Amrita Sher-Gil combined Western training with Indian themes.
• Regional centres: Bombay, Madras (Chennai), Baroda, Santiniketan, Delhi.
• Modern sculptors: Ramkinkar Baij, Somnath Hore, D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Meera Mukherjee and others.
• Printmaking methods: relief, intaglio, planographic and stencil.
• Elements of art: line, shape, form, colour, texture, space, tone.
• Principles: balance, rhythm, proportion, emphasis, unity, contrast.

How to prepare

• Prepare an artist–work–feature list for painters, sculptors and printmakers.
• Learn the four printmaking families and an example of each.
• Practise analysing an artwork using elements and principles.