Indian artists from all across India, famous for their varied artworks from hundreds of years, began experimenting with contemporary abstract art by the late 19th century and early 20th century. Raja Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Amrita Shergil were early pioneers, who blended contemporary concepts into traditional Indian themes, and produced a rich body of work that is highly valued world wide.

Contemporary Indian art began to develop in its own right in the 1960s and 1970s, when artists began to explore new ideas and techniques and experiment with different concepts and media. Some of these concepts were inspired by western genres of cubism, fauvism, expressionism and surrealism. Initially artists had to struggle to retain their traditional Indian ethos among the waves of western influences. However, soon the contemporary Indian artists found their own footing and are now generating world class artworks that seamlessly blend the traditional with the abstract.

Artists like Chandra Bhattacharjee, Soumen Khamrui, Atin Basak, Amitabha Bhattacharjee, Chhatrapati Dutta, Pradip Moitra, Prosenjit Sengupta, Aditya Basak, M S Murthi, S G Vasudeva, Jayakumar have held the baton of contemporary art and have made a deep impression in the minds of their patrons, with their beautiful artworks.

Over the last two years JCCA has been at the forefront of exhibiting contemporary artworks from such leading masters of India. Be it the legendary Himmat Shah, who honoured us by exhibiting sketches and paintings from the series, Under the Mask. Or be it Manu Parekh, whose Banaras series was a hit at JCCA. Or be it, leading artists from Rajasthan and the state of Bengal, whose paintings are a sight to behold.

Now, JCCA once again has the honour to proudly present a Colorful Montage of Indian contemporary art by artists from all over India.