The exhibition, called Ruminations on India: A trail of artworks on paper, at New Delhi’s Bikaner House, Living Tradition Centre, offers a classic treat for art aficionados and aesthetes. Presented by Apparao Galleries, it displays over 100 artworks by artists who shaped the narrative of Indian modern art while defining the visual expressions of various schools of art in the country through associations that birthed the Bengal school of art, Progressive Artists’ Group in the formerly Bombay (now Mumbai), Baroda school of art, Madras school of art and other cross-cultural art networks of post-liberalisation India.
On display is an artistic concoction of varied styles and mediums, ranging from Raja Ravi Varma’s chromolithographs of deities and Jamini Roy’s folksy figurative art on gouche on paper to M V Dhurandhar’s soft pencil portraits on paper and G S Haldankar’s water colour on paper pasted on board. “I have been an artist for 39 years and we thought we would do this exhibition as a lead up to our 40th year. I chose Delhi is because I had been working in the city for over 30 years and I thought it was inevitable that I should do a nice big show here because of the visibility,” says Sharan Apparao, director and founder of Apparao Galleries, which is based in Chennai and Delhi. The exhibit showcases artworks by 96 artists, including Arpita Singh, Anjolie Ela Menon, Somnath Hore, SH Raza, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Amrita Sher-Gil, MF Husain, Raja Ravi Varma, Nicholas Roerich, Manjeet Bawa, Jamini Roy and Tyeb Mehta.
