The Thinking Eye

Dr. Ashrafi S. Bhagat

‘A painter of the quiet reaches of the imagination.’ Richard Bartholomew

INTRODUCTION

From the early 1920s, the impact of European Modernism had been felt on Indian art, evident in the cubist works of Gaganendranath Tagore and the surrealist dream like imagery of Rabindranath Tagore. The growth of abstraction in India was stimulated by the movements from the West. Its slow emergence within the context of Indian modernity and articulation by artists as a privileged visual language [from 40s onwards] was to configure a search for something more rational and pure. Hence abstraction arrived because it was different and offered a new tract that marginalized lyrical and sentimental Neo Bengal styles or nationalist agenda with its narrative and meaning. Pre-Independence, abstraction was considered to belong to the domain of the elite, since it was the Tagores who boldly experimented and explored it in the decades of 20s and 30s, at a moment within the art arena when abstraction as a visual language would have been difficult to understand and more importantly attract patronage or buyers. Until the 40s, abstraction as a language remained unflavored by majority of artists.