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70 years of Indian Artists in Britain
“Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance...”
An excerpt from Jawaharlal Nehru's Tryst of Destiny speech, August 15, 1947
Front row: F N Souza, K H Ara, H A Gade
Back Row: M F Husain, S K Bakre, S H Raza
On August 15, 1947, India was relieved from the shackles of British rule. In the ensuing period of transition, turmoil, and hope, six young visionaries came together in Bombay, now known as Mumbai: K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre, H. A. Gade, M. F. Husain, F. N. Souza, and S. H. Raza united to form the Progressive Artists' Group (PAG). These artists tried to revive this golden bird, India with the power of art. Thus began a new era of India’s tryst with art.
In this strange summer of 2020, Ben Uri Museum in Britain has attempted its first virtual exhibition commemorating 70 years of the Indian artist community- Midnight Family. With the onset of the post-colonial era, many modernists’ fled back to their colonizer’s land to build new lives. Mockingly called from the land of snake charmers, these modernist’s did not fail to surprise the world with their creative expressions by marking Indian Art in the world art map. Since then, the legacy of Midnight’s Family continues to grow in Britain while defining and re-challenging the notion of art across a range of media and stylistic investigations.
The making of this Midnight’s Family goes back to reminiscing the legendary progressive artist- F N Souza, one of the first Indian artists to work in Britain in the post-war period and the first Indian modernist whose works entered the national collection at Tate in 1965. With his Gothic face portraiture, Souza explored the idea beyond merely depicting physical attributes. With spiky and raw detailing, the Souza we see here has succeeded in veiling a comical, humane, and melancholic version of himself. It marks Souza’s early years of using distortion in figures which later proved potent in his unique visual language.
Self Potrait 1961 by F N Souza
Ruth Borchard Collection courtesy PIANO NOBILE,
Robert Travers (Works of Art) Ltd © Estate of F N Souza.
All rights reserved, DACS 2020
“Renaissance painters painted men and women making them look like angels. I paint for angels, to show them what men and women really look like.” – F N Souza
Top: Untitled (Townscape with Moon), 1965 by Sadanand Bakre; Image courtesy Grosvenor Gallery © The Artist’s Estate
Bottom: View from Studio, 1961 by F N Souza
Other few fellow immigrants who chose to take the Indian aesthetics to the Europeans lands included S.K Bakre and Avinash Chandra. The 1960s marked a period of artistic evolution for Bakre. Transforming the Indian art landscape, Bakre resorted to simplistic forms and geometric bodies to express his oeuvre. Over years his art transitioned from academic realism towards what he described as ‘the concept of independent imagery in Indian art’. His painting titled ‘Townscape to Moon’, brought the dull colors of night to life under his moonlight radiance. However, one can’t fail to notice the contrasting visual language in the landscapes painted almost during the same time by Souza and Bakre. Souza’s ‘View from Studio, 1961’, where he depicted London as a gothic city, sans white boulevards is completely in contrast to Bakre’s lively ‘Townscape to Moon, 1965’, without any spiky-ness.
From Left to Right:
(L): Music, 1962 by Avinash Chandre; Image courtesy Osborne Samuel Gallery © Valerie Murray-Chandra and Osborne Samuel Gallery London
(R): Composition pour Jazz, 1915 by Albert Glezies; Image courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
While Souza and Bakre, were recreating real life experiences and the world around them on their canvas, Avinash Chandra allowed music to lead him to define his artistic genre. His work can be defined as an orchestra of artistic elements with the melodies of reds and pinks juxtaposing with the high pitched dark hues of blues, greys and blacks. This psychedelic harmony of textures, overlapping lines and circular shapes, represented his masterly command over his signature style. Being an avid jazz lover and highly inspired from his fellow European contemporaries, one can’t fail to remember the French artist and theorist, Albert Glezies’ artwork improvised by a memory of a Jazz performance titled ‘Composition for Jazz’ painted way back in 1915 and now a part of the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
While the senior members of the Midnight’s Family including Prafulla Mohanti, Saleem Quadri and Balraj Khanna left back some magnificent collection to amaze the world, the younger cohort of artists such as Anish Kapoor, the Singh Twins and Raqib Shaw have left no stones unturned to occupy an eminent position within the international discourse.
NHS V COVID-19: Fighting On Two Fronts, 2020 by The Singh Twins © The Singh Twins
The final two artworks in this virtual show could not be more current or more apposite. These two works were only created earlier this summer, as heartfelt artistic responses to real-world events. The Singh Twins have voiced socio-political views regarding the UK government’s handling of the crisis that interlace the contributions and challenges facing the BAME (non White British) community, contextualizing them from a historic standpoint – replacing the figure of the patron saint of England, St. George with an Asian nurse who slays the dragon personifying the COVID virus, and incorporating an image of Britannia to symbolise how a Britain built on colonialism has always depended on the contribution of people of BAME origin.
A lot of British Indian artists need to be recognized for their contribution and the list can go on but an essay by Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy begs a very important question to the readers – “As Brown artists are given entry into ‘Britishness’, their Indian-ness starts to evade them. It is a strange truth than none of the artists in Ben Uri’s show were included in the blockbuster ‘surveys’ of Indian art that journeyed across the UK: Passage to India (2008) in Manchester; the Serpentine Gallery’s Indian Highway (2009), Saatchi Gallery’s The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today (2010) left out our Midnight’s Family. As India’s contemporary talent made their way into London’s blue-chip galleries via these surveys (Hauser & Wirth for Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher; Haunch of Venison for Jitish Kallat), one begins to wonder: are the artists in Midnight’s Family too British to be considered Indian? Does the right to belong to one category mean summary expulsion from the other?”
As contemporary Indian art enters Britain’s prestigious public collections, this is an identity crisis worth pondering.
Virtually displayed at Ben Uri Museum, London
Co- Curated by Shanti Panchal and Rachel Dickson
With advice and main essay by Dr. Zehra Jumabhoy