Opening - Indian masters @ San Jose Museum of Art

UNTITLED (Designer Baby), 2008

Chintan Upadhyay

 The San Jose Museum of Art just opened a landmark exhibition of modern and contemporary art from India "Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern and Contemporary Art from India."  It showcases important works from renowned modernists such as Maqbool Fida Husain, Tyeb Mehta, Francis Newton Souza, and Sayed Haider Raza, as well as today’s contemporary generation with Anju Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Anish Kapoor and Chintan Upadhyay, amongst others.

UNIVERSAL RECIPIENT – 8, 2008

Jitish Kallat

UNTITLED from the “Diagonal
Tyeb Mehta

The exhibition begins with paintings by the leaders of the cosmopolitan, avant-garde Progressive Artists’ Group, which was formed in 1947 in Mumbai. One of the leaders of this movement is Maqbool Fida Husain, who has been called the “the Picasso of India” . His themes and symbolism are inspired by Indian mythology. His expressive brushwork and angular forms, however, unmistakably echo European modernism. Husain’s galloping creatures with reared heads in Untitled (Horses), ca. 1970, for example, become  For more information, go to the very informative websiteof the museum