DAG Explores the Changing Ways India Has Been Seen, Interpreted and Imagined, at the Fourth Edition of Art Mumbai
At Art Mumbai 2026, DAG, South Asia’s leading art company, presents Visions Across Time, an exhibition spanning the eighteenth to the twenty-first century that examines how artists observed, interpreted and reimagined India across changing historical and cultural contexts. Bringing together works that range from early representations of Indian architecture and landscape to portraiture, mythology, abstraction, still-life and more, the presentation traces a history defined not by a single trajectory, but by encounters between artistic traditions, the reinterpretation of cultural memory and the pursuit of new forms of expression. The presentation unfolds through contrasting approaches to representation, subject and medium-European artists recorded the landscapes and monuments of the subcontinent; academically trained Indian artists adapted established techniques to their own subjects and sensibilities; and successive generations of modern artists challenged conventions of form, narrative and material. Together, the works reveal Indian art as a dynamic exchange between continuity and change, in which inherited traditions become the starting point for new visual possibilities.
Two visions of Mahabalipuram
A particularly revealing encounter comes through Thomas Daniell’s A Hindoo Temple at Mauveleporam on the Coast at Coromandel, in the East Indies (Shore Temple at Mahabalipuram) (c. 1792–93) and Edward Lear’s Mahabalipúram (1875). Separated by more than eighty years, the two works depict the same historic site, inviting a comparison of how India’s architecture and landscape were represented across different moments in the history of European engagement with the subcontinent. Their pairing provides a compelling entry point into the relationship between travel, observation and the colonial encounter, while drawing attention to the ways an artist’s perspective shapes the image of a place.
The Murshidabad Company School watercolours extend this inquiry from architecture to social and cultural life. Fête des Hindous appellée Kales Pojas (Hindu Festival called Kali Puja), Fête des Hindous appellée Churruk Pojas (Hindu Festival called Charak Puja) and Pilgrims at a Riverbank, all dating to the early nineteenth century, record ceremonies, religious practices and people in their surroundings. These works offer a different kind of visual record of India: one attentive to customs and lived experience, and situated at the intersection of artistic observation and documentation.
From academic observation to individual expression
The emergence of academically trained Indian artists marks a significant shift in the presentation. M. V. Dhurandhar’s two untitled charcoal drawings from 1895 demonstrate the possibilities of drawing as a disciplined practice, using tonal variation and close observation to study form. S. L. Haldankar’s Untitled (Portrait of a Parsi Woman) (1945) brings portraiture and individual identity into focus, showing the continuing importance of academic technique in the representation of Indian subjects.
Yet the history traced here extends beyond the assimilation of Western academic conventions. It also considers how artists developed approaches grounded in Indian narratives, cultural memory and their own formal vocabularies. Asit Kumar Haldar’s Kalidasa Reciting his Immortal Meghdut Lyric at the Navratna Sabha of Sri Vikramaditya (Chandragupta II), for instance, draws on a historical and legendary subject, while the early Bengal School painting Vanara Army with Garuda Regaining his Wings adds a further perspective on the continuing presence of epic narrative in Indian art.
These works are not simply references to the past; they demonstrate how cultural inheritance can be actively reimagined. Allah Bux’s Bharat Mata introduces another dimension, in which a culturally resonant image carries the possibility of broader symbolic meaning. Later works, including P. T. Reddy’s Village Deity, J. Sultan Ali’s Pramannu Darshan II and Madhvi Parekh’s Playing with Serpent, reveal the continuing scope for religious, mythological and culturally rooted imagery within modern artistic practice.
The figure, the everyday and the imaginative
The human figure provides another thread through the selection, linking academic observation with more individualised modernist expression. Alongside Haldankar’s portraiture are Bikash Bhattacharjee’s Boy from Shimla and Krishen Khanna’s Nocturne, works that offer distinct approaches to the representation of the individual and the body. M. F. Husain’s Ganga Jamuna broadens the conversation towards the use of cultural reference and narrative within modern painting, while Ganesh Pyne’s The Mask provides a later point of departure for considering symbolism, ambiguity and the enigmatic image.
The selection also draws attention to subjects that might appear familiar or commonplace, but become sites of artistic invention. Laxman Pai’s Untitled (Vase with a Bouquet of Flowers), B. Prabha’s Rose and Jogen Chowdhury’s Tulip offer contrasting approaches to flowers and still life. Through differences in medium, composition and handling, these works invite viewers to consider how an everyday subject can be transformed by an artist’s attention to form, line and visual structure.
Material as a language of modernism
One of the presentation’s most striking themes is the expansion of artistic expression through material and process. In the decades following independence, artists increasingly questioned the conventions of painting and sculpture, exploring the expressive potential of surface, texture, pigment and unconventional supports.
Jeram Patel’s Untitled, made using enamel and metal on blowtorched wood, makes the transformation of the material central to the work’s visual presence. Dhanraj Bhagat’s Musical Construction, constructed from painted wood and metal, moves the discussion into three-dimensional form, demonstrating how material can be assembled into a sculptural structure. Satish Gujral’s Burnt Black Wood, made with burnt wood and mixed media, offers another compelling example of a material whose physical transformation becomes integral to the work. Elsewhere, the surface of the painting itself becomes a field of experimentation. Shanti Dave’s Untitled, executed in oil and encaustic, explores the possibilities of combining paint and wax. D. P. Roy Chowdhury’s The Sentinel, made with oil and sand on Masonite board, introduces a distinctive material combination, while Natvar Bhavsar’s AVANT, using dry pigments with oil and acrylic mediums, foregrounds colour and pigment as physical substances as well as elements of abstraction. Together, these works reveal how material experimentation has expanded the boundaries of artistic practice, making process and surface central to the experience of the work.
The presentation’s exploration of modernism extends across a wide range of visual languages. Rather than presenting modernism as a single movement or style, the selection foregrounds the plurality of practices through which artists developed distinct visual languages. Visions Across Time offers a view of Indian art as a history of continual negotiation between inherited traditions and artistic autonomy. The works reveal how artists have absorbed and transformed influences, revisited familiar narratives and experimented with new forms, without relinquishing the cultural and historical contexts from which their practices emerge. The result is not a single story of Indian art, but a constellation of perspectives—one that invites viewers to consider how the past is continually re-seen, reworked and brought into the present.
Booth A02 | Art Mumbai 2026 | 12–15 November 2026
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