The Kalhath Institute celebrates its 10-year anniversary with a gallery show in Mumbai

Source Architectural Digest by Shaikh Ayaz
Maximiliano Modesti fell in love with “everything about India” on his very first trip in 1993. But it was with Indian craftsmanship and the karigars (artisans) engaged in embroidery and textile-related art that he ultimately forged a lifelong bond. Although the market for luxury brands was nonexistent when he first arrived here, Indian crafts felt truly opulent and far superior to anything he had seen in Europe. “It was obvious to me from the beginning that Indian embroidery was a class apart,” recalls the cofounder of Lucknow’s Kalhath Institute, which won the prestigious AD x JSW Prize for Contemporary Craftsmanship in 2018. The exhibition features hybrid works born from a collaboration between Kalhath’s master embroiderers and artists like Yassine Balbzioui, Amina Benbouchta and T Venkanna. These craft-based experiments reveal aspects linking ancestral knowledge and contemporary design aesthetics, urging the viewer to see embroidery as works of art.
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Professor Knut A. Jacobsen argues that Ravi Varma was the undisputed founder of a genre he terms the “God poster industry.”

Source Daily Jstor by
Varma’s popularity grew at the height of the British Empire in India, as Western-style oil painting, with its emphasis on depth and chiaroscuro, gained prominence in the country. He began by painting grand portraits of royal and noble figures from across India and later turned to scenes from Hindu mythology in his work, becoming the first Indian artist to gain a nationwide audience. In “Indian Painting from 1825 to 1900,” published in the 2011 volume Masters of Indian Painting II: 1650-1900, independent researcher Tryna Lyons describes Varma as “the first of India’s ‘gentleman artists’” because, “at the time that he made the daring decision to learn the craft of painting, artists enjoyed roughly the same social status as tailors and cabinet makers.” His paintings and oleographs, produced by his own printing press, came to define Hindu religious iconography in India. Professor Knut A. Jacobsen, in his 2004 article, “The Child Manifestation of Śiva in Contemporary Hindu Popular Prints,” published in Numen, argues that Ravi Varma was the undisputed founder of a genre he terms the “God poster industry.” This genre took on a vibrant life of its own and remains popular today.
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India On Paper: Priya Paul's Love Letter To Bazaar Art

Source Elle India by Upasana Das
Ravi Varma himself didn’t anticipate the success of his mass-produced oleographs which drew from Hindu mythology; As his Malayalam biographer Balakrishna Nair would later write that there were only a few well-to-do houses where the artist’s works weren’t found. Perhaps it was to capitalise on this unprecedented popularity that the British Unilever company resorted to using reproductions of his works while trying to “Indianize” their product — Sunlight soap. For the company’s 1935 calendar they placed bars of soap at the feet of Vishnu from one of Ravi Varma’s oleographs, almost as if it were a votive offering. They weren’t alone in this strategy as we see in another calendar from 1940 in Paul’s collection advertising the Kerala Sandal Soap manufactured by British-established Kerala Soap Institute in Kozhikode. Oversized packets of soap were cleverly placed underneath Lakshmi’s outstretched hands which poured out coins – again reproduced from a Ravi Varma oleograph – intended to appear as if the soaps were gifts from the goddess herself.
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Nilima Sheikh 'Fractured Skies' MoMA NY Sep 27, 2026–Jun 13, 2027

Source MoMA
“The artist’s role is to bear witness—to both the past and the present,” says Nilima Sheikh. Over the course of her five-decade career, Sheikh has transformed narrative painting as a new way of engaging with history, highlighting lived experiences, illuminating regional stories, and foregrounding women’s voices. Her research-based art practice draws on a vast array of historical accounts, archival materials, and literary sources. Adapting the traditional scroll format and painting primarily in casein and gum temperas, Sheikh weaves together image, text, and stenciled patterning to create multilayered narratives that unfold as interconnected vignettes. Nilima Sheikh: Fractured Skies brings together selections from her series Each Night Put Kashmir in Your Dreams (2003–14) and Home, Land (2023–25) alongside Shahid (Witness) (2025–26), a new, site-responsive set of paintings making its debut at MoMA.
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What’s next for South Asian art? Christie’s Damian Vesey on the market’s evolution

Source Luxebook by Indu Joshi
We are certainly seeing growing participation from institutional and museum-level buyers, as well as non-diaspora collectors, particularly for works of strong historical significance. There has always been a natural bias towards buyers from the region or its diaspora, which is consistent across many collecting categories. We are no longer seeing interest driven by a narrow group of collectors – instead, there is a widening base of engaged buyers who are deeply informed about the historical and cultural importance of these works. The collector base today is markedly more informed and historically engaged than it was during the mid-2000s boom. We are seeing a growing number of collectors who have taken the time to study the field in depth, reading the available literature and revisiting historic auction catalogues that go back decades. This is a very positive development for the market. It reflects a move away from short-term speculation towards more considered and sustainable collecting, grounded in knowledge and connoisseurship.
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“ We are not part of nature. We are nature ”

Source Online Catalogue
Mayur and Tushar Vayeda are two brothers born into the Warli tribe, one in 1987 and the other in 1992. Their grandfather founded the first school in their village of Ganjad (Maharashtra, India), and their mother is a teacher. Both pursued higher education in Mumbai, one in management, the other in multimedia. After their studies, the two brothers decided to leave the megalopolis to return to their native country and participate in the revitalization of their own culture. They returned to drawing, as they did daily with the other children in the village. Their artistic approach consists of creating a dialogue between the animist culture of their tribe, the interdependence of humans and nature, and the ecological challenges facing our planet. > read more

Indian Gallerist Sundaram Tagore Credits Friendships for His International Success

Source Artsy by Gautami Reddy
Né en 1961 au sein d’une des familles les plus influentes culturellement en Inde, Tagore a grandi à Jorasanko Thakur Bari, la maison ancestrale de sa famille à Calcutta, dans l’est de l’Inde, avant de vivre entre Santiniketan et Delhi. Jorasanko était également le lieu de naissance de son arrière-grand-oncle Rabindranath Tagore, le poète, éducateur et peintre qui, en 1913, devint le premier Asiatique et le premier non-Européen à remporter le prix Nobel de littérature. « Calcutta, ancienne capitale de l'Inde britannique, était une ville exceptionnellement cosmopolite », se souvient Tagore. « Peu de gens savent que la première exposition du Bauhaus hors d'Europe s'y est tenue en 1922, présentant des œuvres de Paul Klee et de Wassily Kandinsky aux côtés de celles des plus grands artistes modernes indiens. » La maison de son enfance attirait un défilé incessant d'intellectuels, de militants politiques et de personnalités culturelles.Son père, Subho Tagore, appartenait à ce milieu. « C'était un poète, un peintre et un rebelle à sa manière », explique Tagore. En 1943, Subho a contribué à fonder le Calcutta Group, un collectif d'artistes modernistes précurseurs qui rejetait le romantisme au profit d'un langage visuel plus urgent et socialement engagé. Ses artistes vendaient leurs œuvres pour financer le mouvement pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la lutte pour l'indépendance de l'Inde et la famine du Bengale de 1943 – une catastrophe, aggravée par la politique coloniale britannique, qui fit des millions de victimes.
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Discover online 27 years of passion for contemporary Indian art through 27 souvenir images and 27 exhibition photos

Source India 20 Years of Passion "Since 1996, my passion for contemporary Indian art has led me to organize dozens of exhibitions in Delhi, Paris, New York, and elsewhere. I had the privilege of meeting two legends of contemporary Indian tribal art, Jangarh Singh Shyam and Jivya Soma Mashe, with whom I worked for over twenty years. Thanks to Abhay Maskara, I had the privilege of meeting and working with T. Venkanna and Shine Shivan, two of the most unique contemporary Indian artists of their generation. Today, I continue this adventure with Maximiliano Modesti and the gallery we created together in Brussels. We are currently exhibiting at the Palacio Duques de Cadaval (Évora, Portugal), until October 25th, a selection of works we have both collected over the past 25 years." Hervé Perdriolle
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Christie’s Kiran Nadar exhibition offers unique panorama of Indian art

Source Eastern Eye by Amit Roy
Those who want to learn about modern and contemporary Indian art by visiting just one exhibition should head – now – to Christie’s in King Street in London to see The Meeting Ground, a collaboration between the UK auction house and the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) in New Delhi. Eastern Eye joined one given by Premjish Achari, who began by introducing himself: “I am a curator at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, and in short form, we call it KNMA. It’s located in New Delhi, and it is South Asia’s largest private museum. We started as a museum collecting the modern and contemporary art of South Asia, and from there we expanded to around 20,000 objects. So from modern and contemporary, now we are also collecting folk, indigenous, antiquities, and miniatures. This (selection for London) is a very small percentage of that collection. This represents the modern, contemporary, indigenous, and folk. It’s also intergenerational.”
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Contemporary Now 2026 turns Chennai into a city-wide gallery, tracing the present through living histories of art

Source Indulge Express by Anoushka Kundu
What makes a work of art contemporary? Is it the moment it is created, the materials it employs or the questions it dares to ask? Contemporary art rarely offers definitive answers. Instead, it asks how the past continues to live in the present. That thought runs through Practices in Continuum: Tracing the Present, the curatorial theme of Contemporary Now 2026. For 20 days this month, Chennai will become a city-wide gallery. Across galleries, artist studios, and cultural spaces, 66 artists and seven leading galleries from across the country will bring exhibitions, performances, walkthroughs and conversations to the city.
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Unbound Forms at the Hepworth: how Indian and Bangladeshi artists turned craft traditions into contemporary sculpture

Source The Conversation by Hannah Sabapathy
Craft traditions are often imagined as practices rooted in the past: carefully preserved techniques passed from one generation to the next. But Unbound Forms at The Hepworth Wakefield reveals a more dynamic story. Bringing together the work of five pioneering women artists from India and Bangladesh, the exhibition shows how materials such as textiles, metal, ceramic, wood and paint can be transformed into works that honour inherited skills while pushing them into new territory. The artists in the exhibition lived through a period of enormous change. Four were alive when India gained independence in 1947, while Mrinalini Mukherjee was born just two years later, in 1949. Their work emerged from the newly formed nations of India and Bangladesh, where traditions of making, craft and cultural identity were being reasserted.
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Sip in the silence as you walk through the immersive works of these 3 artists in New Delhi

Source Architect and Interiors India
What does solitude look like today? In a world increasingly defined by speed, noise, and constant connectivity, A Slow Sip of Solitude invites audiences to pause. Presented by Gallery Pristine Contemporary, the exhibition brings together twenty -three works by three Indian artists, Varad Bang, Ayuesh Agarwal, and Salony Garg, whose practices explore the quieter dimensions of human experience: introspection, mindfulness, stillness, and the search for presence.
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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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