Making Modern: Bombay School Artists

The currents of temporality and socio-cultural transformation have long shaped art practices and discourses-and so was the narrative and style of the celebrated erstwhile Bombay School instituted! From the early to mid-20th century, Bombay (now Mumbai) was a thriving epicentre of colonial India, embodying the dynamic confluence of tradition and modernity. A bustling intersection of commerce, industry, and culture, the sleepless city lured diverse communities from across the subcontinent. Then, the cosmopolitan fabric fostered burgeoning arts, cinema, and literature, making it the cradle of modern progressive thought. In this transient nature of space, the revered Sir J.J. School of Art, which had gained momentum of progress by exhibiting emerging talent overseas and in national trade fairs, organically prospered the ‘Bombay School’--a pictorial and homogeneous assimilation of Academic realism, Revivalism, European modernism, Abstraction and Creative painting that had pivoted from the mere copy of reality.

‘In the Heart of a Quiet Gray Mountain’ stares at the restless and soulful junctures of conscious representations by the selected Bombay School artists. Landscape and portraiture functioned as fundamental components of the JJ School syllabus to inculcate ways of seeing and absorbing compositional elements, of which the current cohort gained an indelible expertise. Their narratives stood as bards of everyday aesthetics-real yet sublime.The exhibition shows A. D. Tavaria, Prema Pathare, V. S. Adurkar, P. A. Dhond, B. D. Shirgaonkar, R. P. Joshi, Madhav Satwalekar, and Baburao Sadwelkar.

These artists gained Western exposure through not only European tutors and regular soirées in Bombay but also their travel to countries like France, Italy and the US, among others. In addition, they had been instrumental in their roles as art educators and policymakers, successfully steering the creative pedagogy in Bombay and Maharashtra.

The exhibition invites the audience to re-ruminate on the hybrid and museful essence of the Bombay School discourse and a few of these forgotten practitioners who have receded into oblivion. These artists like reflective rays from a golden reservoir, today, attempt to break through the saturated shadows- aptly expressed by Baburao Sadwelkar’s 1986 artwork titled: “There Exists a Pond of Gold in the Heart of a Quiet Gray Mountain.”

Curated by Aliasgar Mithaiwala

Curatorial essay by Urvi Chheda