“A painting is worth a thousand confused art-gallery visitors.”
– Ljupka Cvetanova
By Nazvi, 9 April, 2020
Art Galleries: a place where even a person who is not an Artist falls in love with the artwork, a place you can just spend hours and hours, gazing and reading about art and not get bored. Here are five Art Galleries that you must visit the next time you’re in Delhi.
Representing some of the most exciting young artists working today and the Estates of essential 20th century artists from India like Nasreen Mohamedi and Rummana Hussain, Talwar Gallery is a contemporary art gallery focusing on artists from the Indian Subcontinent and its Diaspora. Underlying the gallery vision is the belief that the artist is geographically located not the art. Their desires to exceed expectations of locality, of self; to extract purpose and significance from their familiar environs, to create, these artists have renegotiated the borders and refuse to singularly site themselves or their work. Their search and their work traverse any simplified categorization based on geography, religion, culture or race. Talwar New York was launched in September 2001 and Talwar New Delhi opened in 2007. Deepak Talwar, founder of Talwar Gallery, has been working with contemporary artists from India since 1996.
Photograph by: Nazvi
With a commitment to display diverse forms of artistic practices, the art galleries of Triveni Kala Sangam have been pivotal in fostering cultural activity in Delhi. They provide an open canvas for both established and young artists to exhibit their works. The famous Shridharani Gallery is named after Triveni Kala Sangam’s founder’s husband Late Dr. Krishnalal Shridharani, a very well-known poet, playwright and internationally known journalist. It is a platform for showcasing the evolving trends in contemporary art by promoting the works of established and young artists. The Shridharani Gallery holds its place amongst the prestigious Galleries of India.
Photograph by: Nazvi
Founded in New York’s East Village in 1982 and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as a commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment. Since then, Nature Morte has become synonymous in India with challenging and experimental forms of art; championing conceptual, lens-based, and installation genres and representing a generation of Indian artists who have gone on to international exposure. Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs (starting with The Armory Show in New York in 2005) and has participated in Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo, Art Dubai, Tokyo Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi Art Fair and Frieze New York, among others. Nature Morte has also organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India and combining their works with those of Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In addition to its own programming, Nature Morte has collaborated with institutions in India such as the British Council, the Alliance Francais, the Sanskriti Foundation, the India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, the Italian Cultural Center, Khoj International Artists Association, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in both New Delhi and Mumbai.
Photograph by: Nazvi
Renowned as the oldest art galleries in Delhi, Dhoomimal is located in the downtown of the city, Delhi. Established by Ram Babu in 1936, Dhoomimal Art Gallery was initially the stationery shop for artists in 1940s. However, in 1946, Dhoomimal Art Gallery became the prominent place where Ram Babu used to organize group shows of artists; Bimal Das Gupta, Sailoz Mookherjea, Shanti Dev, and K.S. Kulkarni being some popular of them. During that time, it wasn’t a gallery but a meeting place of various artists. However, it was in the 1950s when an exhibition of Jamini Roy was organized in the gallery and that was the time Dhoomimal became the first private Art Gallery of India.
Photograph by: Unknown
DAG has done seminal work in gaining recognition for India’s modern masters whose legacies had been lost to time and apathy in the absence of sufficient viewers, collectors, promoters, curators or scholars. The gallery’s focus has always been research-led. It has documented the works of the finest twentieth century artists, lifting them out of recent oblivion to get them their due appreciation while aligning them with various art movements across the country. Ranging all the way from pre-modern art to modern art practices and tracking the changes in response to constant innovation and experimentation, DAG’s long-term perspective has been at the forefront of most of its activities. This includes its historical curatorial exercises, its publishing and filmmaking programmes, its art appreciation workshops and education initiatives, interfaces with the financial and corporate sectors by way of talks and curated walks, relationship building with institutions and museums around the world, participation in international art fairs, or creating tactile aids for the specially-abled. DAG’s galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai and New York are at the forefront of this movement and have provided a destination for those wanting to discover the enduring pull of Indian modern art.
Photograph by: Unknown
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