The triumph of modernism : India's artists and the avant-garde, 1922-1947

This richly illustrated volume, which spans the period 1922-47, explores the contested history of art and nationalism in colonial India.

The author shows that modernist Western art, which was rebelling against the Western academic tradition, had a strong influence on Indian art made during this period.

During the colonial period, and especially after the 1920s, the Western avante-garde provided a powerful weapon of resistance for Indian artists in their struggle against the colonists, and it is this complex interplay of Western modernism and Indian nationalism that forms the core of this book. "The Triumph of Modernism" takes the surprisingly unremarked Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta in 1922 as marking the arrival of European modernism in India.

In four broad sections, Partha Mitter examines the decline of 'oriental art' and the rise of naturalism as well as that of modernism in the '20s, and the relationship between primitivism and modernism in Indian art - with Mahatma Gandhi inspiring the Indian elite to discover the peasant, the people of the soil became portrayed by artists as 'noble savages'.The book also examines the evolution of a distinct feminine voice through the rise of female artists in colonial India.

Finally, the author probes the ambivalent relationship between Indian nationalism and imperial patronage of the arts. "The Triumph of Modernism" features 150 striking illustrations, with 100 in colour, many of which have never been seen before in the West.

Written in a lively, readable style, the book throws light on a previously unregarded strand of modern art.

Closely analysing the work of scores of artists little-known in the West, the work will prove illuminating for professionals and students of art in general, and modernism and Indian art in particular, as well as the wide general audience for Indian culture and history.