A SHOW OF MILESTONES

GALLERY ESPACE CELEBRATES ITS 35TH YEAR BY LOOKING BACK AND STEPPING FORWARD

In the year 1989, a new gallery in Delhi made waves in the art world by opening with an M.F. Husain exhibition. Husain, in fact, had also designed the gallery's logo of a galloping horse. Gallery Espace had begun to push the artistic envelope with multiple large-format exhibitions like Drawing '94, Sculpture '95, Miniprint '96 and The Self and the World (1997), assembling 16 Indian women artists that featured the likes of Amrita Sher-Gil and Anjolie Ela Menon. Hosted at the National Gallery of Modern Art, the show spelt out the ambitious legacy Gallery Espace would go on to carve.

Thirty-five years since then, it is now taking a moment to look back and reflect on being a witness and a stakeholder in the metamorphosis of the artistic landscape, where every artist of note has graced the walls of this establishment.

“Thirty-five years is such a long history, during which Indian art saw a kind of 360-degree turnaround, and I, fortunately, have stood witness to it,” says Renu Modi, founder, Gallery Espace.