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This newsletter allows you to follow the news of Indian contemporary art through a regularly updated international press review. Since 2008, more than 2,700 articles have been listed and 200,000 pages viewed. In the left column of this newsletter, a search engine allows you to explore one of the 2700 articles listed according to the affinities of Hervé Perdriolle, art critic, curator, collector and, since 2021, gallery owner in Brussels: Modesti Perdriolle Gallery 27 rue Saint-Georges 1050 Brussels.

Cette newsletter permet de suivre l'actualité de l'art contemporain indien à travers une revue de presse internationale régulièrement mise à jour. Depuis 2008 plus de 2.700 articles répertoriés et 200.000 pages vues. Dans la colonne gauche de cette newsletter, un moteur de recherche vous permet d’explorer l’un des 2700 articles répertoriés selon les affinités d’Hervé Perdriolle, critique d’art, commissaire d’exposition, collectionneur et, depuis 2021, galeriste à Bruxelles : Modesti Perdriolle Gallery 27 rue saint-georges 1050 Bruxelles.

T. Venkanna 'Looking for Peace'

Upcoming show T. Venkanna 'Looking for Peace' Modesti Perdriolle Gallery Brussels in association with Gallery Maskara from April 13 to June 10, 27 rue Saint-Georges Brussels, Belgium.

Leading Indian Modernist SH Raza gets first public museum retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris

Source The Art Newspaper by Kabir Jhala
One of India's best-known Modernist painters, the late SH Raza, receives his largest-ever retrospective at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. SH Raza (1922-2016) (until 15 May) is the first major monographic show of the artist, as well as the first to take place in a state-run institution, and brings together more than 90 works in the capital city of his second home. The Pompidou show spans the artist's entire career, from his beginnings in 1940s Mumbai (then called Bombay), where he was one of the founding members of the hugely influential Bombay Progressives Artists' Group, to his move to France in 1950, where he would be based on-and-off for the remainder of his life, and where he developed a style that mixed post-war French and American painting with Rajasthani miniature traditions. His subjects ranged from country landscapes and churches to Indian temple congregations, Islamic architecture and Western cityscapes; eventually he moved into his more abstract—and arguably better-known—period, which dates from the late 1960s onwards and incorporates elements of Tantrism from South Asian scriptures.
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T. Venkanna’s erotically charged artworks actually relay a crucial message

Source Vogue India by Radhika Iyengar
Amidst a lush, green gem-toned thicket, an orgy is underway. The natural curtains of trees reveal more than they conceal. Nude figures indulge in erotic gratification. The air is thick with desire. If you close your eyes, you can almost imagine a staccato of sounds: throaty grunts of pleasure, half-suspended moans, soft sighs. T. Venkanna’s artwork, titled ‘Neither There Nor Here’ (2022), belongs to a striking collection of large-scale, hand-embroidered paintings that were exhibited at his solo show Love Me As I Am at Gallery Maskara during Mumbai Gallery Weekend in January, alongside a selection of his monochromatic watercolour drawings on Wasli paper. The artist’s visceral creations are not meant for puritans. He presents human beings as their raw, primal selves who flout killjoy conservatism. The figures in his fantastical universe are liberated beings—free of inhibitions, moral judgment and censorship. Here, the markers of gender, caste and class cease to exist.
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Vasu Dixit Tracks Folk Music Journeys with Documentary and Performance Series PaDa Project

Source RollingStone by Anurag Tagat
There’s an air of reverence that hangs in the atmosphere where Vasu Dixit is seated or stood around folk and tribal artists in his music documentary series PaDa Project. On the surface, Dixit – the frontman of folk-fusion band Swarathma in Bengaluru but also a filmmaker in his own right – positions PaDa Project videos as his journey to explore India’s longest-standing music cultures, but it’s less like The Dewarists or SoundTrippin than it is about giving the artists their space. Meeting up with artists from Sikkim, Manipur, Meghalaya, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, Dixit’s PaDa Project offers five performances and five episodes (varying from 15 to 20 minutes in length) that explore how deeply connected folk and tribal music is in India across the land.
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Sohrab Hura revisits his moving image works with ‘Half-Image’ at Offset Projects

Source Stir World by Sukanya Deb
Running parallel to the India Art Fair, annually showcased at the NSIC Grounds in New Delhi, Sohrab Hura presented an exhibition titled Half-Moving at Offset Projects' temporary studio space. The exhibition presented four projects, three of which are responsible for having cultivated a memorable oeuvre for the photographer, and are an extension of his retrospective profile at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, presented in 2022 with the same title. Revisiting his works, through this exhibition, the photographer introspects on his journey as a practitioner, his engagement with storytelling, iterative realities, and a falsified image form.
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The Mumbai Collector Building the City a Blue-Chip Art Space

Source The Wall Street Journal by Kelly Crow
Over the past decade, Ambani Piramal, 31, and her mother, Nita M. Ambani, have steadily gained a reputation in international art circles for helping fund museum shows of Indian art around the world, backed by the $83 billion fortune of Ambani Piramal’s father, Mukesh Ambani, who runs the textile and petroleum empire Reliance Industries Ltd. The family’s Reliance Foundation is the main funder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s upcoming summer show on the origins of Buddhist art in India. Yet the plan all along, Ambani Piramal says, was to start convincing faraway museums to send more of their blockbuster traveling shows to India and for the family to support edgy shows closer to home.
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Sharjah Biennial 15 reflects on complex histories through a contemporary lens

Source Architectural Digest by Shaikh Ayaz
It is that time of the year again when the emirate of Sharjah comes alive with an unprecedented showmanship of visual arts, thanks to hundreds of artists, museum curators, gallerists and cultural ambassadors who descend on the Arabian Gulf to leave behind a trail of edgy creativity and philosophical provocations. Currently in its 30th year, Sharjah Biennial's 15th edition makes a bold and authentic statement about the postcolonial future in the global South. Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi, this year's biennial is titled "Thinking Historically in the Present”, and it's an ode to the inclusive vision of veteran Nigerian curator and critic Okwui Enwezor who passed away in 2019. Built to encourage reflections on what Al Qasimi calls the "transnational relationships and conversations" and Sharjah's role as a hub for "a spectral and multinodal experience," the bi-annual mega-event once again manages to be global in spirit and scope, yet local in its mission and context.
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Le musée indien d’art et de photographie MAP s’attaque aux préjugés et au regard masculin

Source News24 par Robinette Girard
Les souvenirs de Bollywood et les tissus tissés traditionnels partagent la vedette avec les bronzes anciens et les divinités sculptées. Le fondateur de MAP, l’homme d’affaires et philanthrope Abhishek Poddar, a déclaré que la collection met “tout sur un pied d’égalité”. “Toute la différenciation entre l’art ‘élevé’ et l’art ‘bas’, les arts décoratifs et les beaux-arts, n’est pas un concept indien”, a déclaré Poddar, qui est l’un des collectionneurs d’art les plus éminents du pays, lors d’un appel vidéo. “C’est une construction très occidentale. C’est comme ça que nous avons grandi en le regardant dans les musées, mais ce n’est pas comme ça dans la vie.”
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Five must-see exhibitions in Mumbai this season

Source Art Basel by Dilpreet Bhullar
Globally known as the financial capital of India, Mumbai places equal emphasis on the preservation of the country’s rich art history without losing sight of the contemporary. Throughout history, and up until today, the city’s flourishing creative scene has fostered a culture of diversity and belonging: Mumbai was once home to the pioneering Progressive Art Collective, whose legacy continues to be seen in the recognition of art as a form of dissent and change in an age afflicted with myopia, while events like the Kala Ghoda Festival and Mumbai Urban Art Festival act as symbols of the city’s interconnectedness. This season, galleries and institutions in Mumbai are reflecting such ethos, presenting works by a spectrum of established and emerging Indian artists who, through their experimentations in genre, format, and form, illustrate various facets of their country’s history. These five exhibitions in particular are worth noting.
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Gond Tribal Art by Jangarh Singh Shyam Sells for Record High at Pundole’s Auction

Source The Wire by John Elliott
Sales of Indian modern art are hitting new highs in the wake of the pandemic. A $16.34 million auction at Mumbai-based Pundole on February 23 produced record prices for several artists. A couple of weeks earlier, the annual India Art Fair in New Delhi that yielded substantial sales with virtually all galleries reportin substantial results for the second year running. The most surprising record at the Pundole auction was a Rs 65 lakh hammer price (just over $91,000 including buyer’s premium) for a Gond tribal canvas by Jangarh Singh Shyam, probably India’s leading Adivasi artist. Painted in 2001, a few months before he died, the 27 in x 40 in serigraphy and acrylic work depicts a traditional scene of Lord Krishna dancing with his gopi (follower), surrounded by a popular Gond rendering of brightly coloured animals, birds and trees. The artist’s previous record of $31,250 was at Sothebys in 2010.
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How The Gandhys Of Chemould Introduced Modern Art To The Masses In Mumbai

Source Homegrown by Gulbahaar Kaur
The Gandhy family at large brought forth a new art culture and appreciation that was not bound by artistic snobbery. Instead they found a way to communicate to the ordinary Indian and transformed Mumbai into a cultural spectacle like Delhi and Kolkata. Kekoo Gandhy and his business partner and wife Khorshed Gandhy introduced stories as well as visuals that spoke of secularism and libertarian ideas during a highly polarising period in Indian politics. The two artistic narratives take a deep dive into this history, providing context to the efforts of the Gandhy family in furthering the communist movement in India. The role they played in shaping a post-ayodhya Mumbai and how they were able to form a historic institution. The book had a formal unveiling at the India Art Fair and is now available at bookstores. The film, made by Gandhy’s daughter Behroze, is set to premiere in Paris & British Film Institute this February.
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The Museum of Art and Photography offers a digital-friendly, interactive experience

Source GQ by Sanjana Ray
Sawhney’s statement is accompanied by a giant sweep of a digital screen sporting six categories: Living Traditions, Modern & Contemporary Art, Photography, Popular Culture, Pre-Modern Art and Textiles, Craft & Design. Click on any of these and it opens up a litany of the museum’s replete collection of the artworks under the particular category. Each artwork then opens further to proffer up all its nitty-gritty details with the notion of providing history at your fingertips: a great way to sift through the 60,000 odd artworks on display across the museum. But even as visitors are tempted to dive into a pit of nostalgia (the museum even has on display some of Bollywood’s most classic film posters), the aim remains to give art history a modern edge. Abhishek Poddar, founder and driving force behind the museum says: “My hope for Museum of Art and Photography is that it can reach people, especially the next generation, in whose hands our future is held. More than half of our population are under 25 years old; no country has more young people. I believe they are the ones, the generation of change, who will eventually be the real curators of MAP.”
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Drawing from life: The Vayeda brothers are taking Warli in a new direction

Source The Hindustan Times by Shireen Quadri
Sprawled across a canvas 132 ft by 40 ft were shapes that could have been leaves, plants, flowers, birds flying in a limitless blue expanse. The entrance to the recently concluded India Art Fair (February 9 to 12) was a breathtaking Warli mural that became a crowd-puller, a crowd-stopper, a hashtag on Instagram. The work was created by Tushar Vayeda, 35, and Mayur Vayeda, 30, also known as the Vayeda Brothers, as a contemporary take on the Warli folk painting tradition from Maharashtra. Titled Forests of the Future, it marked the brothers’ first digital art work, made by remastering high-resolution images with a software program. The response has been “very overwhelming, like a dream come true,” says Tushar Vayeda. “Our timelines are filled with Instagram tags and stories.”
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Collector Abhishek Poddar’s New Museum in India’s ‘Silicon Valley’ Takes a Digital Approach to Traditional Exhibitions

Source Artnet by Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
India’s newest and perhaps most ambitious institution, the Museum of Art and Photography (MAP), is set to open in Bengaluru (Bangalore) on February 18 after much anticipation and a few delays. Known as India’s Silicon Valley, the city is home to many artists, yet it has been on the fringes of the country’s art and cultural offerings, which tend to cluster in New Delhi and Mumbai. Founded by businessman Abhishek Poddar, and dedicated to widening accessibility to South Asian art, MAP has been a stop-start journey from concept to actualization, largely due to construction delays. The task of developing a world-leading museum in an area with scant government support for culture, in addition to a relatively desolate museum landscape in relation to the region’s rich artistic heritage, was always going to be tricky. “I had one person who told me when I was embarking on this project, ‘Abhishek, you are making the biggest mistake of your life,’” said Poddar in a telephone interview.
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India Art Fair was all about artistic experience and creative inspiration

Source Telegraph India by Louise Nicholson
Another two artists whose dreams were realised at the fair are brothers from northern Maharashtra’s Warli tribal community. Mayur and Tushar Vayeda, aged 30 and 34, were represented by Ojas Art. They were also one of the fair’s four artists in residence. Modest, and with no formal art training, they were surprised that their rising fame drew a full house for their talk and a packed workshop to learn the symbolism of Warli paintings. Mayur and Tushar always paint together on a canvas and whoever starts an area, such as a river or hillside of trees, will complete it. They reason that each has a slightly different style, though few other people might see this. In their community, they have a deep commitment to encouraging Warli women to keep making traditional wedding ‘chowk’ wall-paintings, and recording all the painting symbolism. “We always go back to the village to listen to the people,” they said. “Our painting is a language that tells stories. We grew up playing with nature in the Sahyadri hills. We have local knowledge, we talk to the shermans, elders, women.” With this knowledge, the brothers give new meaning to an old subject in their big ‘Tree of Life’ painting at the Ojas Art booth: their tree has two trunks, interlaced root systems, and one feathery mass of assorted leaves. “We imagined a forest where all the trees are one, connected, as they really are,” they explained.
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The Mumbai Urban Art Festival shows the city’s evolving relationship with the sea

Source Artchitectural Digest by Shubhanjana Das
The city of dreams. The maximum city. The financial capital of India. Home to Bollywood. There are as many names for Mumbai as there are avatars of it. But if there’s one thing that is constant for the city, it is the water that embraces it while simultaneously threatening to engulf it. And it is this relationship of the city with the sea that inspires this year’s Mumbai Art Festival by St+Art India supported by Asian Paints. The three-month-long festival that ends 23 February 2023 aims to make art accessible to diverse audiences by stripping off the formality of conventional art spaces.
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What to watch out for at the India Art Fair 2023

Source Architectural India by Avantika Shankar
At Gallery Maskara’s IAF booth, four artists will showcase work across a range of mediums, highlighting how traditional materials can be employed in experimental, contemporary forms. Parag Sonarghare’s larger-than-life, hyper-realistic portraits depict the haunting emotionality of his subjects, who are often from marginalized communities; Prashant Pandey’s abstract sculptures, by contrast, are ephemeral contemplations on human activity; Priyanka Choudhary’s natural pigment text-based works consider the state of the human condition and finally, T. Venkanna’s virulent and unconventional imagery provokes an entirely new perspective on human life. The gallery will also showcase objects of furniture that were born out of a collaboration between T. Venkanna and architect Rooshad Shroff.
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India Art Fair Returns with a Focus on Young Collectors and South Asian Artists

Source Artsy by Reena Devi
“The [Indian] art scene has seen a transformative shift, and together with our artists, galleries, and partners, we’re proud to pave the way for a bold and inclusive new era in the art world,” said Asokan, the fair’s director. “We are determined to deliver the largest and most ambitious edition yet, featuring a diverse range of new and emerging artists from all corners of India and South Asia. “The fair strategy has shifted towards a more domestic focus, driven by strong demand within India and a growing collecting base in cities beyond Delhi and Mumbai who are willing to buy across mediums and price points,” said fair director Jaya Asokan. According to the fair organizers, this approach was a response to the rising number of collectors across India, akin to other parts of Asia such as Japan and South Korea.
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Intricate Warli mural by Vayeda brothers on the India Art Fair façade mesmerises art lovers

Source The Indian Express by Shreya Agrawal
India Art Fair 2023 commenced on Thursday with 86 exhibitors, including 72 galleries and 12 institutions. As you enter the NSIC Exhibition Grounds in Okhla, you’ll be met with not just a crowd of eager art lovers but also a breathtaking façade featuring an intricate Warli mural by Vayeda brothers, Mayur and Tushar. Titled ‘Forests of the Future’, it is the artists’ first digital take on the traditional art of Warli painting, which they have been practising for almost 12 years now. The artist duo highlighted that tribal art, in India, is “underrated” in many ways. “People still look at Warli as a decorative art. So, we really want to find the right place and platform where we can celebrate our centuries-old heritage,” Mayur added. Expressing his happiness over the façade featuring their artwork, Mayur said, “I am elated. I came in the morning and was very excited to see the façade come to life along with the various panels. It’s the best feeling to be the face of the India Art Fair this year. Last year, we were here and discussed about the day we would exhibit here. Today, we are on the façade.”
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Waswo X. Waswo’s solo exhibition at the India Art Fair transcends art and time itself

Source Artchitectural Digest by Arman Khan
The artist, writer and photographer who was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the USA, has lived and exhibited in India for over 20 years, largely working out of his studio in Udaipur, Rajasthan, often collaborating with local artists to carve out a visual language that is best described as amorphous. Now, Waswo's new and previously unseen miniature paintings will be presented by Gallery Espace at a solo booth in the Focus section of the India Art Fair in Delhi, as part of a solo exhibition titled “Last Ride in The Wild, Wild East”. The miniature works at the display, for the first time, incorporate elements of realism, including details from masterpieces by M.F. Husain, Tyeb Mehta and Bhupen Khakhar.
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Everything You Need To Keep An Eye Out For At India Art Fair 2023

Source Grazia by Nida Naeem
It’s a great time to be a part of the Indian art scene. Exhibitions, art walks, public art projects, pop-up events and more have made art accessible like never before. Artists are amassing new fans through the support of contemporary platforms pushing the cultural dialogue in a global direction. More and more artists, curators, and collectors now belong to broader intersections of identity, expanding on the vision of a more inclusive arts culture. And where better to immerse yourself in this culture than at India Art Fair?
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India Lowdown: Must-See Exhibitions in New Delhi

Source Ocula by Cleo Roberts-Komireddi
As India Art Fair (9–12 February 2023) launches its largest edition with over 85 participating galleries and an expanded site incorporating a digital art space, New Delhi's galleries are fired up. From Indigenous art forms to new concepts of pop, Ocula Magazine shares exhibition highlights across the city.
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India Art Fair 2023: How to navigate the event like a seasoned old-timer

Source Vogue India by Riddhi Dastitar
India Art Fair is back in Delhi from 9th to 12th February for its 13th edition. As the doldrums and general inactivity of January recede, one of the most beautiful months in the city arrives. The winning combination of sun and temperance makes it the perfect season for weekend walks around the India Art Fair’s massive grounds at NSIC, Okhla as well as to drop in on the slew of parallel events at the city’s many art hubs. Whether you’re a creative, connoisseur, curator, collector, or just curious, India Art Fair is the place to get a pulse of the country’s contemporary art scene, encounter a modern master or stumble into your new favourite artist(s). Here’s Vogue India’s guide on what to look out for.
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In memoriam: Balkrishna V Doshi (1927 – 2023)

Source Wall Paper by Ellie Stathaki
A glance at the dates and it's clear that Balkrishna V Doshi and modern Indian architecture grew side by side. A student at the JJ School of Art in Mumbai when India celebrated its independence in 1947, the architect's career runs alongside the creation of some of the country's most iconic contemporary architecture. From his involvement in the Chandigarh project and India's famous Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn heritage, through to its finest architecture education institution – he designed and founded the School of Architecture and Planning in Ahmedabad in 1962 – Dr Balkrishna Vithaldas Doshi has been an omnipresent figure for a remarkable period of India's built environment.
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