Leading Lights

India’s earliest art collectives, formed around the time of the Partition, had different intense ways of being modern, maintains SHUKLA SAWANT.

A newspaper clipping of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, 1948. Front row, from left: F. N. Souza, K. H. Ara, H. A. Gade; seated behind, from left: M. F. Husain, S. K. Bakre and S. H. Raza. Displayed on the wall are: Souza’s Lovers and Nude Girl and Husain’s Toilet. Courtesy: Inaugural Exhibition Catalogue of the NGMA, Mumbai, 1996, The Moderns. IMAGE COURTESY DELHI ART GALLERY.

The manifesto of the Progressive Writers’ Association, signed by many literary figures and published after a gathering in Lucknow in 1936, is often seen as the first call to arms to creative practitioners to put into action the ideas of an international revolutionary socialism. The ringing declaration - “All that arouses in us the critical spirit, which examines institutions and customs in the light of reason, which helps us to act, to organize ourselves, to transform, we accept as progressive” – was only a small part of the manifesto. I would like to highlight this fragment at the outset for it helps us to understand the secessionist Progressive Artists’ Group in Bombay and the Silpi Chakra in Delhi. These artists’ collectives coalesced in the 1940s against the backdrop of the fragmentation of the Indian subcontinent into ‘national’, constitutionally framed entities.

The inclination towards collective, secessionist activity within the history of Modernism has often been overlooked in favour of mapping the careers of ‘genius’ artists who now form its canonical history. However, being a part of a ‘progressive’ group set up to oppose institutional conservatism and combat the historicist tendencies of the time, was almost essential in the evolution of an Indian artist of the 1940s. Yet, it must be pointed out that long before progressivism as an ideology in the visual arts became a phenomenon, the Santiniketanbased artist Nandalal Bose had already lent support to the Progressive Writers’ Association’s declaration for a politicized art practice.

F. N. Souza. Untitled. Oil and watercolour on paper. 27” x 21”. 1956. IMAGE COURTESY DELHI ART GALLERY.

The radical intellectual vigour of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) – comprising F. N. Souza, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre and H. A. Gade – stemmed from the fact that the alliance was forged across religious, social and class divides at a time when bitter feuds within the political class had led to the suffering of millions. The formation of the PAG was significant because it spelt out an agenda for a shared future based on aesthetic principles. Theorizing a collective subjectivity on formalist grounds, Souza declared, “Today we paint with absolute freedom for contents and techniques, almost anarchic; save that we are governed by one or two sound elemental and eternal laws, of aesthetic order, plastic coordination and colour composition”. In its bid for independence from the venerable academy, i.e. the J. J. School of Art, Bombay, the group primarily embraced artists who had failed to make the grade at the academy’s rigorous examinations. (Souza was expelled for political activities, Ara never attempted to make the grade and Husain failed to enter the hallowed portals of the J. J., even though he had passed the Intermediate Examination in Drawing and Painting from Indore in the 1930s). These artists challenged accepted styles as well as the social niceties of The Bombay Art Society’s salon style of exhibition, even though they had initially attained visibility through the Society. They claimed autonomy by mounting their own exhibitions, which were supported by an emerging class of sympathetic patrons and art critics in exile from war-torn Europe who were well aware of international modernism. This aesthetic alliance, forged across hardening national boundaries, later led to the dispersal of the group, with many members choosing to make their way to London and Paris.

In keeping with the Communist ideology that swept across the creative horizon of the Progressive Writers’ Association, PAG’s members often engaged in social critique. They frequently foregrounded the proletariat and exhibited in unconventional locations. However, demagogues within the Left demanded a strict adherence to the socialist cause and therefore, could hardly have appealed to the Progressive artists for long – the latter were too free-spirited to remain within the confines of a declared intent. (Souza, for example, would have found it very difficult to pledge his fidelity to an injunction against sexual libertinism, passed by the second conference of the PWA.) This led to the eventual disintegration of the group.

Delhi Silpi Chakra members at the time of the Indonesian Art Exhibition.
IMAGE COURTESY DELHI SILPI CHAKRA: THE EARLY YEARS, PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, NEW DELHI, 1998.

While PAG’s canonization rests chiefly on the nature of its utopian alliance despite its brief life, the Delhi-based Silpi Chakra had a much longer existence and a remarkable beginning. It came up against the backdrop of a massive refugee crisis that changed the face of Delhi in 1947. Progressive in their outlook yet not affiliated to any political party, the five founding members – Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, Kanwal Krishna, Dhanraj Bhagat, K. S. Kulkarni and Pran Nath Mago – officially launched the group in 1949 after a rebellious but failed attempt to take over the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, the pre-eminent artists’ body at the time. The three core members of this ever-expanding group were émigrés from Lahore. They brought with them the cosmopolitan sensibility of the city and positioned themselves as social crusaders who were closely allied with the political commitments of the literary scene.