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Lalit Kala Akademi
The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art (LKA) is India's national academy of fine arts. It is an autonomous organisation, established in New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, in and outside the country.
LKA provides scholarships and a fellow program, and sponsors and organises exhibitions in India and overseas. It publishes a bilingual journal. It is funded by the Union Ministry of Culture. Its headquarters are at Ravindra Bhawan, Ferozshah Road, New Delhi.
After achieving independence in 1947, the leaders of India's nationalist movement realised the value of culture as a vehicle of interaction and its importance in shaping not only the Indian identity on its own, but also carving out a sphere of interaction where other art forms would further the cause of national unity. It was seen necessary that a cultural reorganisation of the nation should come through the institutional infrastructure of the state. The state patronage was not for the art, but for the artists, who using the physical environment and infrastructural facilities provided to them, could carry on with their art. Unlike private institutions which could change their program of support depending on market conditions, the Lalit Kala Akademi sought to support all forms of art — studio, experimental, developmental, ‘folk’, and ‘tribal’.
In constructing a national heritage of India, — ancient, medieval, as well as modern lineages were to be taken into account. In the wake of the anti-colonial independence movement, the developments in Modern Art drew from the underlying currents that linked modernity with an inherited, indigenous past. The art-historian Partha Mitter, has argued that Modern Art in India developed through a series of interactions and frictions between "colonial hegemony and national self-image". Emerging out of the colonial encounter with the Western "other", the options available were within the confines of colonial ideologies as well as colonial institutions of art.
Anubha Mehta notes that the Gandhian movement was a political one, and not a social one. There were only a few phases when the artists were directly involved. Most important was the moment of Nandalal Bose's involvement. From 1920, some occasional exhibitions of paintings coincided with the sessions of the Indian National Congress. In 1936, Nandalal Bose responded to Gandhi's summons to organise an exhibition of Indian art at the Lucknow session of the INC. From hereon, the project of placing exhibitions of a continuous history of Indian art became important. In 1937, the entire Congress township at Faizpur in Maharashtra was designed as an ideological statement by prominent Modern artists. By 1938, the INC pavilions at Haripura were decorated by artists from Shantiniketan led by Nandalal Bose. Drawing stylistic inspiration from ‘folk’ art, the subject matter was rural life, and ordinary people. This was an important moment in India's history of Modern Art as it revelled in the affinity with folk, which seemed to underline an imaginative and technical range that had a richer visual vocabulary than that of Western Academism. This art is made to appeal both to the connoisseur and the common man. This came to be the nationalist alternative that was firmly in opposition to the colonial art establishment. The multiplicity of responses of the Indian artists to western modes of art served as a catalytic force and created a foundation for exploring what could be the specific Indian character of modern Indian art. This very cause, of the Indian character, was taken up by the Lalit Kala Akademi when it was established in 1954.
Artists like Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, and Abanindranath Tagore came to be seen as ‘authentic’ because their subject matter incorporated many folk idioms that they inculcated over time through their involvement in the Gandhian phase of the nationalist movement after 1920. These idioms were accommodated, aestheticised, and modernised into the canon of Indian Modernism. The selective focus of the official cultural discourse became a major factor in defining Modern Art in India. In 1950, the President commissioned Nandalal Bose to complete a set of paintings for the original handwritten manuscript of the Indian constitution. He was later bestowed with various national awards and his work was celebrated as that of a ‘national artist’. The Lalit Kala Akademi sold his paintings as a special portfolio (1982–83) in all their centenary publications as a landmark in modern art.
In adherence to this idea of nationalism in modern Indian art, Maulana Azad, the Minister of Education set up the Lalit Kala Akademi so that the state could carry forward the cultural renaissance in India and patronise art with an impact and reach across the country.
By the 1940s, there was an emergence of organised groups of artists in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, and Madras. There were some prominent organisations in Delhi which worked towards the promotion of visual arts in the country. Important among them were the Sarada Ukil School of art, the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society and the Delhi Shilpi Chakra. The Minister of Education had also set up an art department in the Delhi Polytechnic in 1942.
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Lalit Kala Akademi
The Lalit Kala Akademi or National Academy of Art (LKA) is India's national academy of fine arts. It is an autonomous organisation, established in New Delhi in 1954 by Government of India to promote and propagate understanding of Indian art, in and outside the country.
LKA provides scholarships and a fellow program, and sponsors and organises exhibitions in India and overseas. It publishes a bilingual journal. It is funded by the Union Ministry of Culture. Its headquarters are at Ravindra Bhawan, Ferozshah Road, New Delhi.
After achieving independence in 1947, the leaders of India's nationalist movement realised the value of culture as a vehicle of interaction and its importance in shaping not only the Indian identity on its own, but also carving out a sphere of interaction where other art forms would further the cause of national unity. It was seen necessary that a cultural reorganisation of the nation should come through the institutional infrastructure of the state. The state patronage was not for the art, but for the artists, who using the physical environment and infrastructural facilities provided to them, could carry on with their art. Unlike private institutions which could change their program of support depending on market conditions, the Lalit Kala Akademi sought to support all forms of art — studio, experimental, developmental, ‘folk’, and ‘tribal’.
In constructing a national heritage of India, — ancient, medieval, as well as modern lineages were to be taken into account. In the wake of the anti-colonial independence movement, the developments in Modern Art drew from the underlying currents that linked modernity with an inherited, indigenous past. The art-historian Partha Mitter, has argued that Modern Art in India developed through a series of interactions and frictions between "colonial hegemony and national self-image". Emerging out of the colonial encounter with the Western "other", the options available were within the confines of colonial ideologies as well as colonial institutions of art.
Anubha Mehta notes that the Gandhian movement was a political one, and not a social one. There were only a few phases when the artists were directly involved. Most important was the moment of Nandalal Bose's involvement. From 1920, some occasional exhibitions of paintings coincided with the sessions of the Indian National Congress. In 1936, Nandalal Bose responded to Gandhi's summons to organise an exhibition of Indian art at the Lucknow session of the INC. From hereon, the project of placing exhibitions of a continuous history of Indian art became important. In 1937, the entire Congress township at Faizpur in Maharashtra was designed as an ideological statement by prominent Modern artists. By 1938, the INC pavilions at Haripura were decorated by artists from Shantiniketan led by Nandalal Bose. Drawing stylistic inspiration from ‘folk’ art, the subject matter was rural life, and ordinary people. This was an important moment in India's history of Modern Art as it revelled in the affinity with folk, which seemed to underline an imaginative and technical range that had a richer visual vocabulary than that of Western Academism. This art is made to appeal both to the connoisseur and the common man. This came to be the nationalist alternative that was firmly in opposition to the colonial art establishment. The multiplicity of responses of the Indian artists to western modes of art served as a catalytic force and created a foundation for exploring what could be the specific Indian character of modern Indian art. This very cause, of the Indian character, was taken up by the Lalit Kala Akademi when it was established in 1954.
Artists like Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, and Abanindranath Tagore came to be seen as ‘authentic’ because their subject matter incorporated many folk idioms that they inculcated over time through their involvement in the Gandhian phase of the nationalist movement after 1920. These idioms were accommodated, aestheticised, and modernised into the canon of Indian Modernism. The selective focus of the official cultural discourse became a major factor in defining Modern Art in India. In 1950, the President commissioned Nandalal Bose to complete a set of paintings for the original handwritten manuscript of the Indian constitution. He was later bestowed with various national awards and his work was celebrated as that of a ‘national artist’. The Lalit Kala Akademi sold his paintings as a special portfolio (1982–83) in all their centenary publications as a landmark in modern art.
In adherence to this idea of nationalism in modern Indian art, Maulana Azad, the Minister of Education set up the Lalit Kala Akademi so that the state could carry forward the cultural renaissance in India and patronise art with an impact and reach across the country.
By the 1940s, there was an emergence of organised groups of artists in Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, and Madras. There were some prominent organisations in Delhi which worked towards the promotion of visual arts in the country. Important among them were the Sarada Ukil School of art, the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society and the Delhi Shilpi Chakra. The Minister of Education had also set up an art department in the Delhi Polytechnic in 1942.
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