We are proud to present Kumar Gallery’s Platinum Jubilee exhibition, Ten Modern Masters. Over the last 70 years, Kumar Gallery has patronized many of the Modern Masters of India, providing critical and unconditional support during their vulnerable and formative years. In selecting artists, Virendra Kumar often looked for the seeds of a courageous heart and a relentless drive for innovation. Innovation, however, is never totally new, but rather is the quality that allows something novel to emerge from seemingly known and familiar parts. The history of Modern Indian Art often reveals how artists looked back at the illustrious history of India, and gave birth to new aesthetic forms that celebrated both a lived past and imagined future. Modern Indian Art is of vital importance to India as a nation precisely because artists reflected the hopes, aspirations, concerns, and traumas of the nation as a whole in their artworks. The 10 Modern Masters selected for this exhibition are F N Souza, M F Husain, A Ramachandran, Sohan Qadri, G R Santosh, Krishen Khanna, K S Kulkarni, Ram Kumar, Sankho Chaudhuri, and Satish Gujral.
-

In this exhibition, we hope that viewers will see how Post-Independence Indian Art tells, in glimpses and glances, in nudges and shades of nuance, India’s principled and resilient re-discovery of identity and struggle for prosperity. Kumar Gallery celebrates this quintessential zeitgeist of Modern Indian Art with iconic works that showcase virtuoso and creativity directed towards that aim. Some works have been supplemented with references or archival materials to help viewers reflect and engage with the artist’s historicity and creative process. I hope that you will visit in person and experience each artwork in the flesh.