The Government School of Arts and Crafts (now Government College of Fine Arts), established in 1850, became the centre for the emergence of this movement in the 1960s. The configuration of the art movement had been initiated under the tenure of D P Roy Chowdhury, its first Indian artist principal (1930-57), who laid emphasis on the development of a fine arts curriculum, put forth an empirical and perceptual approach to art making, and axed the colonial pedantry of human form study based on classical statuary.
Madras Modern—the recently concluded (June 2-July 6) exhibition at the DAG chronicles this transition of the often-underrepresented schools of Indian art. Though ‘Madras’ refers specifically to Chennai, the city was a converging centre for aspiring artists from all four southern states—Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. From the pioneering concepts of DP Roy Chowdhury to the contemporary practitioners of the Cholamandal artist’s village established by Paniker—the exhibition builds a timeline for the art practices, experiments and themes coming out of the Madras School of Art.