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The enduring legacy of Delhi Shilpi Chakra, Capital’s first art collective
Almost 80 years later, the spirit of collaboration and artistic resolve of the collective is now being celebrated in the exhibition 'Drawing a Nation. The Delhi Silpi Chakra' at DAG.
BC Sanyal and Dhanraj Bhagat's works from the exhibition. (Courtesy: DAG)
In the winter of 1949, Delhi was an unlikely site for an art exhibition. In newly Independent India, the city was still reeling from the trauma of the Partition, there were no private art galleries and the venues to exhibit were rather limited. At Freemasons’ Hall on Janpath Road, a group of artists mounted an exhibition that marked an important moment in the cultural history of the nation.
The show marked the debut of the Delhi Shilpi Chakra (DSC), an artists’ collective formed in 1949 to create a platform for artistic exchange. Several of its early members had, in fact, once resided in what became Pakistan, including, notably, BC Sanyal, PN Mago and Dhanraj Bhagat. Their artistic concerns had brought them together, and the debut exhibition itself was a testament also to the public support they had received, with carpets supplied by The Kailash Carpet Company, a store in Connaught Place, and nearby merchants helping with screens and lighting.
Almost 80 years later, that spirit of collaboration and artistic resolve is now being celebrated in the exhibition ‘Drawing a Nation. The Delhi Silpi Chakra’ at DAG in Delhi, till March 21. Reflecting on the collective’s emergence at a critical moment in post-Independence India, the exhibition examines its role at the intersection of art, community and public life, not just through the works of several of its artists but also through their correspondence. Now considered arguably one of Indian art’s longest-running and largest art collectives, its members over the years have included, among others, KS Kulkarni, Kanwal Krishna, Devayani Krishna, Satish Gujral, Avinash Chandra, Ram Kumar, Arpita Singh, Paramjit Singh and Rameshwar Broota.
BC Sanyal and Dhanraj Bhagat’s works from the exhibition (Courtesy: DAG)
Eventually finding a permanent premises in 1957 at Shankar Market, the collective also organised exhibitions in neighbourhoods such as Chandni Chowk, Karol Bagh and the Delhi University Campus. Several of its members also later played an important role in public institutions such as the Lalit Kala Akademi, National Gallery of Modern Art and Delhi College of Art.
In a publication accompanying the exhibition, art historian Atreyee Gupta writes, “The collective… must be understood not only as an artistic enterprise, a school or style cohered around a common aesthetic project, but as a cultural formation, a postcolonial avant-garde whose historical significance lies not only in the artworks produced by its artist members but in the collective’s attempt to reimagine the role of the artist in a society under transformation.”
The publication also has Ashok Vajpeyi, poet and managing trustee of The Raza Foundation, recalling how during one of his visits to Delhi from Sagar (Madhya Pradesh), at 17, he accompanied poets Naresh Mehta and Shrikant Verma to a solo of Ram Kumar at the DSC premises in Shankar Market. Struck by the diverse gathering of people that included fiction writers, poets, dramatists and critics, he also notes that DSC’s motto — ‘Art Illuminates Life’ — was “a call to forge a new concept of art not only rooted in life but illuminating it”. He adds, “As a newly formed democratic republic, India needed an art milieu that affirmed plurality — one that was varied, vibrant, rooted and innovative. It also needed a space for creative interventions and critical conversations. The DSC, in some measure, was able to provide these elements, helping New Delhi evolve into a cultural capital both in spirit and action”
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