This exhibition featured 90 works from the collection of Umesh and Sunanda Gaur. It included watercolors, drawings, etchings, sketches, and lithographs by Indian modernists, born primarily before the 1950s who came of age in the decades following Independence in 1947. These artists span the transition from colonial to postcolonial India, embrace both realism and abstraction, explore complex metaphors, and make political statements that directly engage India’s past, present, and future.
The exhibition was curated by Rutgers University Professor Tamara Sears during a Curatorial Studies seminar in Rutgers University’s Department of Art History.
Fully illustrated catalog was published by Mapin (India) in conjunction with the exhibition. Professor Sears and Grinnell College Art History Professor Michael Mackenzie wrote main essays for the catalogue. Additional catalogue contributions were made by Paula Sengupta, Emma Oslé, Darielle Mason, Rebecca Brown, and Jeffrey Wechsler. Wechsler served as a curatorial consultant for the exhibition. Grinnell College President Anne Harris penned the foreword to the catalogue.
The publication was made possible by a grants from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and support from Umesh and Sunanda Gaur.