The beginning of the 20th century witnessed the rise of the nationalist art 'movement'-there was a marked shift in the aesthetic preferences of the Indian public at large, leading to the gradual emergence of a group of painters engaged in evolving a fresh, 'new' Indian aesthetic. Slowly, distinctions began to arise between 'committed' artists and 'professional', commercial artists. Soon, artists like Raja Ravi Varma and Bamapada Banerjee began to give way to artists like Abanindranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose.

While this transition occurred most evidently in approaches to painting, and later, in approaches to sculpture, printmaking was by no means unaffected. The implications of the distinction between 'printing' and 'printmaking' slowly began to become clearer, and printmaking as a mode of artistic expression finally began to come into its own. It was only after half a century, that 'printmakers' were spoken of as being distinct from painters and sculptors. The beginning of the 20th century saw the emergence of printmaking as an independent art form with a multitude of aesthetic possibilities and an identity of its own.

Moreover, at the beginning of the 20th century, 'art' and 'applied art' came to be considered, not as two separate spheres, but as two aspects of the same profession. A successful artist was one who had acquired formal training and had inculcated 'high' Western aesthetic sensibilities (which would bring him important commissions and employment opportunities).

As more and more Indians began entering art schools, printmaking began to make gradual inroads into the aesthetic consciousness of the
educated and intellectual elite at the forefront of the artistic revolution. The greatest thrust, however, came from the Tagore family in Calcutta. The three brothers, Abanindranath, Gaganendranath, and Samarendranath (nephews of Rabindranath Tagore) transformed the south veranda of their Jorasanko residence into an art mecca. They began to host regular art salons and their home became the meeting venue for members of the informal Bichitra Club: this was where new styles of painting and printmaking were explored. Works from the Bichitra Studio (despite the Club's informal and liberal profile) were highly respected by the educated Bengali middle classes who were increasingly attracted to art as a possible vocation. For the first time, artists such as Gaganendranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose began to practise printmaking as an interventionist activity. Around this time, the art centre set up at Rabindranath Tagore's new university at Santiniketan began to attract the attention of a new breed of nationalist artists. Abanindranath's students chose to teach art at the ashram school at Santiniketan, at the Bichitra Studio, and at the Society of Oriental Art, over and above similar jobs at government art schools. In 1920-21, Nandalal Bose became the Principal of the newly founded Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan. It was from here that the graphic art movement in India truly began. By the first quarter of the 20th century, Nandalal Bose had introduced graphic art into the Kala Bhavana curriculum. From 1920-30, he experimented ceaselessly with printmaking practices, seeking a new spontaneous language that was concise, simple, and uncluttered. He understood well the futility of trying to translate Occidentally styled imagery into a traditional Oriental format-the resultant vocabulary would undoubtedly be hybrid and confused. Bose rejected the Western mode of representing three-dimensional space on a flat surface using linear perspective: he developed a personal style that employed a relatively flat perspective (i.e. a two-dimensional view) by evenly distributing positive and negative areas. His prints were crisp, the lines were swift and taut, and the blacks and whites balanced each other perfectly. One could say that Bose's graphic work bordered on abstraction. Though he had absorbed many influences while developing his unique vocabulary (Far Eastern imagery, classical Indian art, for instance), he broke free of their static conventions. Instead, he developed a highly original syntax - his prints were always lively.

Nandalal Bose. Boatman. Linocut illustration from Sahajpath by Rabindranath Tagore. 1930.

Though Bose rarely drew from Western academic styles, the influence of modern European design interventions is evident in his later works. Also evident, particularly in his figurative and landscape intaglios, is his keen interest in Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. However, the lyrical quality in Bose's work owes a lot to the intrinsic rhythm he discovered in the lives led by local people.

Like some of his predecessors, Bose too used printmaking as a means of mass communication. In the 1930s, Ramkinker Baij and Bose printed political posters for the Non-Cooperation movement. Bose also illustrated Rabindranath Tagore's Sahajpath in 1930. These simple yet attractive illustrations are representative of the forms that Bose explored through his graphic work. It is for his ability of abstracting objective reality (and creating a pictorial text), while retaining a distinctly indigenous aesthetic sensibility (despite employing foreign technology) that Bose is regarded widely as the first modern pioneer in Indian printmaking.

Indian printmaking is indebted to him not only for furthering the limits of graphic imagery, but also for spearheading a graphic art movement in Santiniketan. In the early years, his students, namely, Ramendranath Chakraborty, Mukul Dey, Manindra Bhushan Gupta, Biswaroop Bose, Ramkinker Baij, Benode Behari Mukherjee, Surendranath Kar, Ranee Chanda, Jagdish and Kamala Mittal, and many others, were responsible for fostering an active interest in creative printmaking. Ramendranath Chakraborty introduced graphic art in the curriculum of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, when he became its Principal in 1943. It was here that some of the most significant printmakers of the mid-20th century began their journeys. At a time when very few India artists were engaging committedly with the graphic arts, and almost everyone was painting oils, Haren Das chose to remain a printmaker. Educated in the strictest traditions of British academic art, Haren Das exemplifies the dilemma that Indian art education is faced with even to this day. Together with some of his contemporaries (Shaffiuddin Ahmed, who pioneered the graphic art movement in Bangladesh, for instance), Das remained true to academic art and craft tenets. While the avant-garde artists of post-Independence India used their skills to evolve a modern idiom, some like Das remained imprisoned within the confines of what they had been taught at the art academies. Others like Zainul Abedin, Chittaprosad, and Somnath Hore adopted a contrary approach: amongst the first few to realise the potential of printmaking as a medium for the masses, they chose to wield the burin and the bully to depict the wounds of 'Hungry Bengal' and arouse the patriotic fervour of an enslaved people. Active participants in the agitation against the British 'scorched earth' policy implemented in the Chittagong countryside during the Second World War, and acquainted with the Communist movement, these artists moved from village to village as volunteer workers, commiserating with the suffering and poverty of famine-stricken Bengalis. Led by Chittaprosad, printmaking now assumed a new role as an instrument of protest.