"The show's curation is designed to bring out previously unrecognised visual resonances between Indian and Arab artists, who rode the same aesthetic and ideological currents in the shadow of empire. The mesmerising, mountainous faces of the Syrian painter Marwan Kassab-Bachi, for instance, grope independently towards the same undefinable truth as the ghostly heads of the celebrated Bombay master Francis Newton Souza."
"But the resonances go beyond the visual. In the exhibition's opening display, Visions of Freedom, artists and intellectuals grapple with the darker side of liberation in a world partitioned by colonial powers. Bold black drawings by the socialist painter Chittroprasad Bhattacharya depict the new citizens of independent India dying of hunger on streets paved with the riches of empire."
"Meanwhile, a taught, brooding canvas, in green oil so dark it could be black, depicts the bloody 1971 Indo-Pakistan war. It is the work of the Indian artist Krishen Khanna, who grew up in what is now Pakistan, and celebrated his 100th birthday in New Delhi this year. A centenary exhibition of his work is currently on show nearby, at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) Mumbai."
Resonant Histories at Mumbai's CSMVS brings together more than 40 works lent by the Barjeel Art Foundation alongside Indian pieces from the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation. The curation highlights visual and ideological resonances between Indian and Arab modernists who engaged similar aesthetic currents under colonialism. Paintings range from the mountainous faces of Syrian Marwan Kassab-Bachi and the ghostly heads of Francis Newton Souza to socialist black drawings by Chittroprasad Bhattacharya confronting hunger and displacement. Krishen Khanna's dark canvas recalls the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war. Syrian works by Abdul Qader Al Rais and Naim Ismail depict refugee suspension and Palestinian guerrilla iconography.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
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