The maverick of horses, artist M F Husain not just painted the equine but also built them. In his later years, he might have cast them in Murano glass, but much earlier he had carved them in wood, painting them on the wall with playful cutouts. One such creation from the ‘40s — when he was working at a children's furniture studio in Mumbai — now occupies a wall at Shridharani gallery at Triveni Kala Sangam in Delhi. It is part of the exhibition titled “Sculpting the Century”, which explores the evolution of the medium in India through the works of over 25 artists, loaned from private collections. “An important component not just of art, sculpture as a medium reflects its times perhaps more explicitly than any other form because of its three-dimensional quality. The impact that it has is very immediate and needs to be fore-fronted," notes Yashodhara Dalmia, curator of the exhibition. She adds, “There are also several misconceptions regarding the medium in India. While we speak about the early times and the wondrous Elephanta and Ellora caves and Mahabalipuram relief carvings, several believe that nothing major took place in sculpting till modern times, which is not true because the vacuum only existed very briefly. There were, in fact, developments that also took place during the colonial times. The sculptors during this period, for example from Santiniketan, made works which rooted them to the country and reflected the human condition of exploitation which existed then.” So the exhibition begins at the dawn of modernism in India in the early 20th century, when the development of a modernist language was still taking shape and artists were searching for a vocabulary that was distinct from western movements and revivalist categorisations. Among the earliest works is a bronze figure of Mahatma Gandhi by Ramkinkar Baij, the pioneering modernist. His student at Santiniketan, Somnath Hore reflects on the human predicaments through plaintive figures and starving animals. Sankho Chaudhuri's aesthetic, meanwhile, reveals his grounding in traditional Indian philosophies as well as international modernism. Prodosh Dasgupta — a member of the Calcutta Group, one of the earliest collectives of modern artists in India, established in 1943 — is represented through a bronze sculpture with women seen grinding flour in a wheel, highlighting both the rigour of labour and also how both genders need to participate in nation-building. Ashok Vajpeyi, managing trustee of The Raza Foundation, that is presenting the exhibition with Progressive Art Gallery, notes, “As the works included in the show exemplify, sculpture has incorporated memory and heritage, extended them to include a more restless, in many ways, unsettling present. The sculpture creates an ethos of recall and resource and yet asserts the moment.” The narrative focuses not on the chronology but artistic mastery. While the immediate years after independence had artists such as Satish Gujaral and Amarnath Sehgal finding a new home in Delhi post Partition, in the western part of the country, the Progressive Artists' Group was established in 1947 — among its members, the exhibition sees Krishen Khanna's iconic bandwalla, master colourist SH Raza's stool in wood covered with blobs of paint, and Akbar Padamsee’s powerful heads that seem to contain a motion within, as they gaze into infinity. Known for his experimentation with material and medium — from terracotta to reverse painting, murals and book illustration — artist-pedagogue KG Subramanyan is represented through a wood and leather deer. His student at MS University in Baroda, Gulammohammed Sheikh’s Tree to Tree features winged forms attached to a chair, commenting on the pluralistic realities of our times. While for several artists sculpture was a parallel pursuit, others engaged with it as a primary medium of expression. Among them is KS Radhakrishnan, whose Maiya in bronze embodies the feminine archetype. Himmat Shah's heads in terracotta and bronze, meanwhile, reflect his deep interest in the material culture of antiquity. Mrinalini Mukherjee is perhaps best known for her unconventional use of materials, such as hemp and jute, but Dalmia chooses a terracotta from the later period to showcase how her forms retained the organic fluidity even with hard-edged materials. “In the vast landscape of sculpture in India, the notion of innovation and reinvention play a dynamic role,” notes Dalmia. Harsh Vardhan Singh, director of Progressive Art Gallery adds, “At its heart, this exhibition is not only about sculpture as an art form but about what it represents — a continuing search for identity, for balance between tradition and innovation, and for the translation of lived experience into lasting form.”
