RABINDRANATH TAGORE | GAGANENDRANATH TAGORE | NANDALAL BOSE | RAMKINKAR BAIJ | KRISHNA REDDY | SOMNATH HORE | MAQBOOL FIDA HUSAIN | FRANCIS NEWTON SOUZA | RABIN MONDAL | REBA HORE | SAKTI BURMAN | BHUPEN KHAKHAR | LALU PRASAD SHAW | GANESH HALOI | JOGEN CHOWDHURY | KALAL LAXMA GOUD | MANJIT BAWA | PRABHAKAR BARWE | AMITAVA | PARESH MAITY | RAQIB SHAW
This exhibition assembles works on paper by artists spanning more than a century of Indian art, from the early modern experiments of the Bengal School to the contemporary imagination of Raqib Shaw. By placing these pages side by side, the show traces an evolving vocabulary of mark‑making, line, and surface that accompanies—and often anticipates—larger shifts in style and thought.
Paper is sometimes seen as a provisional surface, a place where ideas rehearse before arriving elsewhere. Here, it operates differently. Whether postcard, cartridge sheet, or carton board, each support is treated as a site sufficient in itself, capable of holding immediacy and refinement at once. The works range from swiftly improvised ink passages to labour‑intensive mixed‑media constructions, inviting viewers to consider how a medium often associated with study can also carry finality, ambiguity, and revision in the same breath.
The earliest works, by Rabindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore, demonstrate how spontaneity and satire entered Indian modernism through the fluidity of ink. Rabindranath’s blot‑based forms hover between accident and image, while Gaganendranath’s ‘Varsity Scream No 2.....Help!’ (1921) channels social critique through quick, incisive lines. Nandalal Bose’s painted postcards extend this sense of mobility: compact landscapes that fold observation, travel, and communication into a single gesture.
Drawings by Krishna Reddy and Somnath Hore mark a mid‑century turn toward humanist inquiry. Reddy’s graphite studies reveal the structural discipline that underpinned his later technical innovations, while Hore’s works focus on the live form, rendered with restraint and an economy of line.The same decades witness the assertive hand of M. F. Husain and F. N. Souza; their brush and pen transform paper into a stage of urgency—Husain through fluid, theatrical silhouettes, Souza through barbed contours that test the limits of the human form.
Narrative and introspection entwine in Bhupen Khakhar’s intimate scenes, while
Prabhakar Barwe pares symbol to near silence. Ganesh Haloi’s miniature gouaches turn colour and calligraphic stroke into meditative rhythm, and Jogen Chowdhury’s supple ink‑and‑pastel drawings press the everyday into tactile immediacy.
Later entries extend the timeline into the present. Amitava repurposes cartonboard as both surface and subject, setting everyday material against fluid, atmospheric colour. Raqib Shaw’s densely worked compositions, layered with enamel, glitter, and ink, push paper toward ornamental excess, while retaining the quick responsiveness that anchors drawing to thought.
‘Works on Paper’ therefore reads less as a collection of studies than as a history of decisions made in graphite, wash, and pigment. By shifting attention from canvas to page, the exhibition highlights a quieter yet persistent strand of Indian art, one in which surface, process, and memory are held between the fibres of the sheet itself.