Masters, anew

In its most ambitious undertaking, the Delhi Art Gallery is laying out a banquet of the rarest finds in Indian art

- SNEHA BHURA

THE ELEPHANT (MAN) IN THE ROOM (2021)

by Jogen Chowdhury

Medium Bronze

Sculptures of the great Indian polymath, Rabindranath Tagore, have always paid due reverence to the details of his sagely demeanour. They have always been respectful of his monumental intellect. But, perhaps, the most fascinating portrait of Tagore was done in 1938 by Ramkinkar Baij, India’s first modernist sculptor. In The Poet (Head of Rabindranath Tagore), Baij has sculpted Tagore with his face lopsided, hollowed out and almost emaciated. It was probably Tagore’s first psychological profile as a troubled man.

Baij’s student Shankho Chowdhury was so enamoured by the cement sculpture that he cast a similar one in bronze. The Poet, in bronze, is now part of the National Gallery of Modern Art’s collection in Delhi. “The NGMA does not have the original sculpture; we have it,” says Kishore Singh, noted art critic and senior vice-president of Exhibitions and Publications at Delhi Art Gallery (DAG), one of India’s foremost, and perhaps richest, private art enterprises.

But why would not NGMA, the country’s premier seat for modern and contemporary Indian art under the ministry of culture, showcase The Poet’s original in cement? “They need to have the budget for it. Such works should be acquired by a museum so they are available to the public at large,” says Singh.

GENOCIDE (1972)

by Rabin Mondal

Medium Oil on canvas