Detail: The first exhibition of the three-part Modernist Art from India series focuses on representations of the figure and the body in modernist art from India after the nation's independence in 1947.
Figuration has been a long, sustained tradition in Indian art - both ancient and modern- and Indian artists had already begun to incorporate secular and non-courtly figures into their works prior to independence. Post-independence, notions of the figure and body became connected with the creation of new cultural identities, as well as the broad social and political concerns facing a new nation.
Reflecting on the predominant concerns of India's artists in the decades after Independence, The Body Unbound considers the artistic and psychic significance of figurative modes in these paintings. As India's artists negotiated professional, social, and political spaces for themselves in a changing nation, the way in which they represented the body continued to evolve. The exhibition will include works from the early 1940s - mid 1980s, ranging from traditionalist representations of Indian villagers and townspeople, to representations of metaphysical "Man," to the socially and politically charged narrative representations that predominated in the 1980s.
The Body Unbound will be followed by Approaching Abstraction in spring 2012.