Kiran Nadar on a landmark exhibition from her museum collection

Source Christie's

Kiran Nadar on a landmark exhibition from her museum collection: 'Art can do what politics and public discourse often cannot — it creates space for empathy’
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INDIA CHEGA AO PALÁCIO DUQUES DE CADAVAL

Source Lux Deco
O Palá­cio Duques de Cada­val, em Évora, trans­for­mou-se uma vez mais num lugar de encon­tro entre dife­ren­tes geo­gra­fias, tem­pos e for­mas de expres­são artís­tica. A expo­si­ção ‘INDIA’ reúne cerca de quinze artis­tas con­tem­po­râ­neos indi­a­nos, pro­ve­ni­en­tes de con­tex­tos urba­nos e de comu­ni­da­des tri­bais, numa expo­si­ção que revela a com­ple­xi­dade e a riqueza de um ter­ri­tó­rio onde tra­di­ção, espi­ri­tu­a­li­dade e expe­ri­men­ta­ção con­vi­vem lado a lado. Mais do que uma apre­sen­ta­ção de arte con­tem­po­râ­nea indi­ana, a expo­si­ção pro­põe uma mudança de pers­pe­tiva: olhar para a Índia não como uma rea­li­dade única, mas como um con­junto de múl­ti­plas vozes, his­tó­rias e lin­gua­gens. Entre prá­ti­cas liga­das a gran­des cen­tros urba­nos e cri­a­ções pro­fun­da­mente enrai­za­das em tra­di­ções ances­trais, INDIA cons­trói um diá­logo onde dife­ren­tes for­mas de cri­a­ção coe­xis­tem em igual­dade. A esco­lha do Palá­cio Duques de Cada­val acres­centa uma dimen­são sim­bó­lica ao pro­jeto. Ins­ta­lado num edi­fí­cio com sécu­los de his­tó­ria, o espaço aco­lhe uma expo­si­ção que revi­sita uma rela­ção igual­mente longa entre Por­tu­gal e a Índia, mar­cada por via­gens, inter­câm­bios cul­tu­rais e encon­tros que con­ti­nuam a encon­trar novas for­mas de expres­são no pre­sente. A expo­si­ção estará patente até 25 de outu­bro, no Palá­cio Duques de Cada­val, em Évora.
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Craft finds a new voice

Source Mumbai Mirror by Sapna Sarfare
A decade after its launch, Lucknow’s Kalhath Institute is challenging who gets recognised as an artist, one embroidered work at a time For generations, Indian embroidery has travelled the world attached to luxury labels, couture houses and museum collections. The names remembered, however, have rarely been those of the people whose hands created the work. That imbalance sits at the heart of Kalhath Institute, a Lucknow-based organisation that has spent the past decade trying to change how Indian craftsmanship is valued, taught and understood. Founded in 2016 by textile expert Maximiliano Modesti and Mohammed Amine Dadda under the Kalhath Foundation, the institute treats traditional embroidery as more than inherited skill. It encourages artisans to study the history of their craft, engage with contemporary artists and discover their own creative language. To mark its 10th year, Kalhath has partnered with designer and architect Rooshad Shroff for an exhibition at Gallery Rooshad Shroff in Ballard Estate, bringing together embroidered artworks, archival photographs and pieces created through its Artist-in-Residence programme.
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India Palace of the Duques of Cadaval Evora Portugal Exhibition until October 25, 2026

In the 1970s, otherness—the recognition of the other as a distinct being, carrying a culture, ideas, or experiences different from one's own—was at the center of the concerns of Indian artists and intellectuals. In 1982, the Bharat Bhavan was inaugurated in Bhopal, the first museum to present in a single venue artists from the subcontinent's major art schools alongside those from folk and tribal cultures. The Évora / India exhibition at the Palace of the Duques of Cadaval is part of this school of thought and brings together eighteen contemporary Indian artists from the most diverse cultural backgrounds.

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The art of painting Urdu

Source Scroll.in by Shweta Upadhyay, Impart
It was Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020), known professionally as Zarina, who first used Urdu text prolifically in her works. Ahmadzai acknowledges Zarina’s influence on Nafas; in fact, one of the letters in the series is titled Zarina ke Naam, in which she pays homage to the artist. The wounds of Partition had left a profound, pit-deep sense of homelessness in Zarina. Her works are replete with whimsical borders, skeletal houses, pitch-black margins that drag you in their vortex of darkness. They refer to the deracination wrought by Partition that separated her from her parents and siblings who moved to Pakistan. In an interview, Zarina had noted that words preceded images in her practice. Some of Zarina’s works that foreground Urdu language are part of the show Urdu Worlds (2026) at the Ishara Art Foundation in UAE. Curator Hammad Nasar writes in the curatorial note that Zarina thought she was “too Muslim for the US and India, and too Indian for Pakistan.” Instead, she considered herself an “Urdu artist.”
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Christie’s London Sale Confirms Growing Appetite for South Asian Art

Source Artnet by Richard Whiddington
In its first London sale of South Asian modern and contemporary art in seven years, Christie’s achieved £18.9 million ($23.9 million). All of the 93 lots, which came from a single private collection, sold above their presale estimates, resulting in the most successful sale of its kind that Christie’s has staged in the British capital. The collection had been formed across the 1990s and 2000s and included statement works from some of the pioneers of modern South Asian visual culture. “The sale reflects something deeper than strong material,” Varun Kaji, a prominent South Asian art advisor, said over email. “This collection was assembled with real conviction, and the market responded accordingly.”
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This is Indian art’s golden moment. It’s important to not stay stuck in the past

Source The Indian Express by Trisha Mukherjee
Having made a big splash at the Venice Biennale after seven years, Indian art is ready for its next major milestone with yet another landmark exhibition: ‘The Meeting Ground’, presented by the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) at Christie’s London. An impressive survey bridging “modern and contemporary practices with folk and indigenous artistic traditions from South Asia,” it is perhaps the biggest showcase of Indian artists since ‘The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998’ at the Barbican Centre, London, in 2024. The KNMA show does attempt to diversify by including folk and indigenous traditions through the works of Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe.
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Indian Summer: As regional tensions grow, South Asian artists make connections in London.

Source Ocula by Debika Ray
For Venkanna himself, whose first solo institutional exhibition in London follows a presentation at Frieze in 2025, London is attractive because it brings together audiences from many parts of the world. “But as an artist, I try not to think too much about markets,” he says. “Last year, I met collectors from Europe, the United States and Asia, as well as curators and museum professionals. The response gave me confidence that, while the work emerges from my own experiences and surroundings, the questions it asks are not limited to one place.”
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Korwa Drawings: Adivasi Expression at the Edge of Language

Source The Wire by Impart
The Pahadi (Hill) Korwa are a distinct sub-group of the Korwa of central and northeastern India, who belong to the Munda ethnic group; they are a designated Scheduled Tribe, and further classed as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group (PVTG). Most live in the Vindhyadri mountain range that cuts across Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, in the Raigarh and Surguja districts respectively. Historically they were known to be skilled hunters and also foraged and practised shifting cultivation. In modern India, the livelihood of many Pahadi Korwa depends variously on small-scale settled agriculture and livestock rearing, and the foraging and sale of produce and firewood from forests, while others are landless labourers often subject to exploitation and marginalisation. In 1983 Swaminathan, then the director of Bharat Bhavan, organised a visit to the Pahadi Korwa in Surguja and Raigarh as part of the institution’s drive to document the cultural production of Adivasi artists in the region and collect artworks for its museum Roopankar. The initial team of field researchers he sent — selected art students from government colleges who had been oriented and trained — noted the Korwa’s interest in their notebooks, pens and crayons, and their keenness to use the materials. When Swaminathan arrived later with fellow artists Jyoti Bhatt and Anil Kumar, he began making sketches of the community leader and his wife with pen on paper, as an attempt to establish some form of communication given his lack of knowledge of the Korwa language. On his prompting, several of the villagers then produced drawings over a period of days. This was done as a community activity, though they worked individually on large sheets of paper with the pens, pencils, markers, brushes they were provided. They are seen in photographs drawing with the paper laid flat on the ground. Later the same year, Swaminathan wrote about the experience and published the drawings in his book The Magical Script. The drawings were exhibited at Bharat Bhavan in 1985. In 1996, Jamme came across the drawings there, and later travelled to the Pahadi Korwa villages, accompanied by a support team including a translator, to collect more drawings in a similar exercise. These, along with the drawings made in 1983, form the complete extant collection of Korwa drawings today.
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‘Shocking? It’s only what you see in ancient temples’: painter T Venkanna on his joyous carnivals of copulation

Source The Guardian by Cleo Roberts-Komiredd
TVenkanna’s paintings land like a sucker-punch. At the centre of his first institutional solo show at London’s Studio Voltaire is an overbearing altarpiece, modified by two squat side panels to take the overall shape of a juvenile dick drawing. Perched at the bottom, on either side, are Adam and Eve. Their backs are turned as they look out on an orgasmic thicket of desire. A female figure is pleasured by another’s nose, someone copulates with the hindquarters of an animal and others fondle in a kaleidoscopic blur of colours and styles that make Hieronymus Bosch look restrained. But carnal enjoyment is merely the footnote. “It is a way to consider many things, including the myth of religions,” says Venkanna. Scattered within this longing landscape are stony figures redolent of India’s pantheon of gods and goddesses. Women worship a topiary lingam – the aniconic depiction of Shiva – and a man caresses a statuesque woman’s breast (while drinking from her vagina). Graphic? “That is what you see in ancient temples,” says Venkanna. “People touch the breasts of sculptures so that over time they become very smooth and shiny.”
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Bijoy Jain And Studio Mumbai: The Indian Architect Redefining Sustainable Luxury Design

Source Outlook by Aaron Jacob
uxury has become a strange thing. Once upon a time it meant hand-carved stone, timber shaped by skilled craftsmen and homes built to survive centuries. Today, it often means touchscreen panels controlling automated curtains, buildings wrapped entirely in glass and enough electronic systems to launch a small satellite into orbit. The result? Structures that require enormous amounts of energy merely to remain comfortable. Buildings that seal themselves off from nature while claiming to celebrate it. Homes that somehow feel less human despite being packed with more technology than ever before. And then there is Bijoy Jain. While much of contemporary architecture is obsessed with speed, scale and spectacle, Jain has spent decades pursuing something far more radical: slowness. Not the fashionable sort of slowness discussed in design conferences, but genuine architectural patience. Buildings that breathe naturally. Spaces that age gracefully. Structures designed not to dominate their environment but to belong to it.
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India’s Kiran Nadar Museum to stage major South Asian art exhibition at Christie’s London this summer.

Source Artsy by Katie White
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) will present a major exhibition from its collection at Christie’s London this summer, marking the first time the auction house’s annual exhibition series has been dedicated to a South Asian institution. Titled “The Meeting Ground: Scenes from the KNMA Collection,” the exhibition will run from July 16th through August 21st at Christie’s King Street headquarters. Organized in collaboration with the auction house, the exhibition will feature works from the New Delhi–based museum’s collection spanning modern and contemporary art, alongside folk and Indigenous artistic traditions from South Asia. Works by artists including M.F. Husain, Sayed Haider Raza, F.N. Souza, and Jangarh Singh Shyam will be featured.
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Nalini Malani’s Venice Biennale 2026 exhibition confronts violence, myth, and motherhood

Source Hapers Bazaar by Radhika Iyengar
Malani’s Venice installation comes to life at the Magazzini del Sale, a 15th century salt warehouse complex belonging to the Renaissance. With its nine large arched doorways, discoloured terracotta bricks and a wooden trussed roof, Magazzini del Sale is brimming with character. This warehouse of yore overlooks the historical waters of the Giudecca Canal that once served as a passageway for boats carrying salt. Malani, who is known to carefully consider the architectural anatomy of the sites where she exhibits, will project the animations onto Magazzini del Sale’s walls. “The history of the site is very important to me because I work with the space, not just a white cube,” she says, noting that she visited Magazzini twice last year for recce and rehearsals. In the course of our conversation, she reveals herself to be an avid reader of Greek mythology, sharing snippets from tragedy, and occasionally, offering nuggets of trivia: for instance, the word ‘salary’ comes from the word ‘salt’, she informs, once a precious monetary commodity. In the universe Malani creates, complex myths and their narratives no longer remain distant or opaque—they are distilled through a lens to gauge what is happening now.
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How Dayanita Singh Organized a Major Show in Venice

Source Hyperallergic by Hrag Vartanian
This show continues that career-spanning goal. After giving herself the challenge of achieving all this without major corporate or commercial gallery funding — though she was able to get funding for shipping from her India-based institutional partner — Singh bartered and negotiated her way into Italian archives from Naples to Venice. She found individuals along the way that she calls patrons who helped support her passion for photography’s new frontiers, unmoored from the anchors of deep pockets that hinder her imagination. “It was an experiment to see if it was possible to really work with the friendship economy and make something outside the very commerce-driven biennale time,” Singh told me during our video interview last week, now online. “We couldn’t afford PR, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to come, and that’s fine too. Even if nobody comes, I did it. But people are coming.”
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Kader Attia to Curate the 2027 Kochi-Muziris Biennale

Source Art Asia Pacific by Yuqian Fan
The Kochi Biennale Foundation has named Algerian French artist, curator, and scholar Kader Attia as curator of the seventh edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which is scheduled to open in 2027. Born in Dugny in 1970 and based between Berlin and Paris, Attia examines the ongoing ramifications of colonialism through installations, films, sculptures, and archival research, often articulated through his long-term engagement with the concept of “Repair.” He is a professor of time-based media at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and has been recognized with the Marcel Duchamp Prize in Paris (2016), the Joan Miró Prize in Barcelona, and the Yanghyun Prize in Seoul (both 2017). In 2022, he curated the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. In a statement, Attia said he looks forward to drawing on Kochi’s layered cultural histories to frame both art and dreaming as forms of “repair,” adding that both the biennial and Kerala offer “the space-time to reclaim our sovereignty over our dreams.”
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A collector’s guide to Ganesh Pyne

Source Christie's
As a teenager, Pyne discovered the paintings of the Bengal School, established in the late 19th century by Sunayani Devi and Abanindranath Tagore. This nationalist modern art movement promoted a romantic, symbolist style based on Indian mythology, using ink wash and tempera. ‘You can see their influence in his early paintings of the 1950s,’ says Avari, ‘but very quickly Pyne starts to move on. The works become more existential in theme, reflecting the post-colonial crisis of identity India was experiencing at the time.’ Pyne’s paintings are metaphysical and suffused with a primeval darkness. ‘There’s a “lost world” quality to them that is timeless,’ says Avari. Ganesh Pyne was once described by the journalist and film-maker Pritish Nandy as a man who ‘radiated a mysterious quality’. He was an intensely private artist who rarely gave interviews, which meant clues to his personality were often sought for in his paintings, charged with the supernatural. ‘He raises the ghosts of the past,’ said the actor Barun Chanda in the documentary A Painter of Eloquent Silence.
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In lines French art critic and cur­ator Hervé Per­dri­olle’s book takes read­ers into the world of Warli mas­ter Jivya Soma Mashe

Source The Hindu by Shailaja Tripathi
French art critic and curator Hervé Perdriolle first met Mashe in the late 1990s, and what began as a search gradually turned into a long, enduring friendship. Over the years, Perdriolle spent time with Mashe in his village, observing not just his art but his way of living. Despite language differences, their connection grew through shared time, gestures and a quiet understanding. This led to a book on Jivya Soma Mashe. Created over decades, the book brings together rare images and personal memories. During an interview, Perdriolle talks about documenting with care Mashe’s life and art(Roli Books India).
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Vaccine billionaire buys $17.9m Raja Ravi Varma, setting new record for Indian painting at auction

Source Gulf News by Stephen N R
A 19th-century masterpiece by Raja Ravi Varma has sold for a record $17.9 million at an auction in Mumbai, setting a new benchmark for Indian art and underscoring its growing global value. The oil-on-canvas painting, Yashoda and Krishna, was auctioned by Saffronart on Wednesday, far exceeding its estimated price of $8.6 million to $12.9 million. The work — depicting the Hindu deity Krishna with his mother Yashoda — is now the highest-priced modern Indian artwork ever sold at auction, as well as the most expensive Ravi Varma painting globally. The painting was acquired by industrialist and vaccine tycoon Cyrus Poonawalla after an intense bidding contest.
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Life in Bombay through the lens of Raghubir Singh at Jhaveri Contemporary

Source Stir World by Chahna Tank
Running from March 12 – April 25, 2026, the solo exhibition brings together a selection of works by the Indian photographer who captured the rhythms of urban life in a city constantly reshaping itself—in colour. Shot on 35mm film, these raw and vivid images register what Singh described as “the several forces working in Bombay,” in a conversation with British writer V. S. Naipaul for his book Bombay: Gateway of India (1994). “It is a go-ahead city. There is tremendous movement and energy,” he noted. Born in Jaipur into an aristocratic family, Singh was largely a self-taught photographer who was influenced by illustrious figures such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and William Eggleston, as well as Indian visual forms like Rajasthani miniature and Mughal paintings. While he lived and worked across Hong Kong, Paris, London and New York—collaborating with publications including National Geographic, The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time during his prolific career—it was in the streets of India that his photographic practice found its most defining expression, to which he kept returning. Working in colour at a time when black-and-white still dominated the medium, he emerged as an instrumental figure in Indian street photography—a flâneur, meandering around with his camera, trying to capture the polyphony of urban life in cities like Calcutta, Rajasthan, his native state, Varanasi (especially Ganges) and the unreal city that was Bombay.
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What to See During New York’s Asia Art Week

Source Hyperallergic by Rhea Nayyar and Isa Farfan
Nearly 100 20th- and 21st-century works coalesce for Christie’s South Asian Modern and Contemporary Art auction this spring, bringing an explosion of color and culture from the subcontinent and its diaspora. Anchored by Tyeb Mehta’s “Gesture“ (1970), this painting-forward sale brings together quintessential works by Jamini Roy, M.F. Hussein, Satish Gujral, Sheila Makhijani, and Arpita Singh, among others. Cubism, Fauvism, and Minimalism are intertwined with Tantric painting, experimental figuration, and culturally and religiously significant motifs. Catch the five-day preview at the Rockefeller Center before the live sale!
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Raghubir Singh Bombay

Source Ocula
Jhaveri Contemporary is proud to present Raghubir Singh: Bombay, a solo presentation of photographs by the late Raghubir Singh. A pioneer of analogue colour street photography, the exhibition chronicles the city between the late 70s to mid 90s. Singh saw this process as crucial, as much so as the shooting. While his street photography was bound by an element of chance and accident, often demanding a quick response, editing was a way to dwell. Editorial choices helped Singh to, he said, ‘trap the movement on the street, in relationship to...static elements.’ Time too was spent studying colour, contrasts and form. Before the era of digital enhancement and filters, Singh produced images, like Victoria Terminus, Bombay (1991), that pop. His masterly use of colour was essential to expressing India. He explained, ‘The fundamental condition of India...is the cycle of rebirth, in which colour is not just an essential element but also a deep inner source, reaching into the subcontinent’s long and rich past.’
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Masters' Strokes: Rohit Chawla photographs India's finest artists in the solitude of creation

Source Open by Sohini Dey
To Rohit Chawla, who made this photograph, the artist is a refresh­ing voice in a country squeamish about sex. “An artist like Venkanna surprises me with his humility and talent—the fact that a man living in a joint family, with very traditional parents in Hyderabad, creates the most wonderful erotic and provocative works,” he says. Venkanna is one of the 62 artists in Chawla’s new book, Portrait of An Artist (280 pages, `2,500), published by Mapin Publishing in association with Kiran Nadar Museum of Art. The culmination of a decade-long undertaking, which had Chawla slipping inside the studios of India’s most legendary artists and brightest emerging names, the book features more than 100 photographs with much of the accompanying text by writer and curator Kishore Singh.
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The Great Indian Art Mafia

Source The New Indian Express by Dr Alka Pande
A major controversy came into light in November 2010 when the Bengaluru-based auction house, Bid and Hammer Auctioneers Pvt. Ltd., auctioned the 120-year-old painting Jatayu Vadham by Raja Ravi Varma. After acquiring the artwork, Nadar commissioned a technical evaluation, which concluded that the painting was a duplicate. Instances of art forgery in India are not uncommon. In 2009, renowned artist SH Raza attended an exhibition of his own works at the Dhoomimal Gallery in Delhi. To his shock, the then 86-year-old artist discovered that several pieces displayed were counterfeit. Similarly, in 2008, a Mumbai gallery owner was arrested for selling forged works attributed to artist Subodh Gupta. Earlier, in 2004, two paintings by Anjolie Ela Menon that had been sold through a South Mumbai gallery were later identified as fakes.
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The Indian art market is rising once more – is growth sustainable this time?

Source Art Basel by Cyrus Naji
The Indian art market is reported to be booming. More art is being sold today in the country than ever before, and for higher prices – a sea-change in the market evidenced by the repeated shattering of auction records: last September, a single sale at the New Delhi auction house Saffronart made USD 40.2 million, while, in March, a 1954 painting by the Modernist master Maqbool Fida Husain sold for USD 13.8 million at Christie’s in New York. With the Indian economy experiencing strong growth (the IMF recently upgraded India’s 2025–26 GDP growth from 6.6% to 7.3%), there is every chance the current upswing in the market will be sustainable, but buyers’ tastes remain cautious, focused on bankable names and conventional genres. And, of course, we have seen the Indian art market boom before, around 20 years ago. So, what makes today so different?
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India Art Fair 2026: What to expect from one of South Asia’s leading art events

Source QG India by Sanjana Ray
The idea of a systematic approach to art may sound like blasphemy, but let’s be honest — art, especially when encountered in the scale and density of the India Art Fair, can be overwhelming. You might have four days to wander (leisurely and directionlessly) through the cultural sprawl at Delhi’s NSIC grounds, but we’ve mapped out a guide anyway, so you can move through the experience with intention — and time to spare.
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