Cubism and India

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A backgrounder

As of 2025

Vandana Kalra, March 24, 2025: The Indian Express

Paintings by J Sultan Ali (left) and Prosanto Roy, part of the DAG exhibition. (Photos courtesy DAG)
From: Vandana Kalra, March 24, 2025: The Indian Express

Georges Braque, 1908, ‘Maisons à l’Estaque’ (Houses at L’Estaque). (Wikimedia Commons)
From: Vandana Kalra, March 24, 2025: The Indian Express

Gaganendranath Tagore’s ‘Sat-Bhai Champa’. (Wikimedia Commons)
From: Vandana Kalra, March 24, 2025: The Indian Express

Gaganendranath Tagore’s ‘Dwarkapuri’. (Wikimedia Commons)
From: Vandana Kalra, March 24, 2025: The Indian Express

Cubism was one of the most influential art movements of the early 20th century, emerging from the desire for intense experimentation and using distortion as a tool to challenge prevailing norms in the art world. In the Indian context, it attained a distinct identity, becoming more fluid but with roots in ancient Indian traditions and museum collections.

Some of its early proponents in India included Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938), Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980) and NS Bendre (1910-1992), followed by the likes of FN Souza (1924-2002), MF Husain (1915-2011), Paritosh Sen (1918-2008), who took inspiration from the avant-garde movement for several of their artworks.

As the exhibition “Deconstructed Realms: India’s Tryst with Cubism” (February 8 to April 5) at the DAG art gallery in Delhi celebrates Cubism in India, we trace its evolution and varied adaptations.

How Cubism emerged

In the early 20th century, Cubism challenged the then-prevalent belief that art should copy nature or that artists should adopt traditional techniques of perception and depiction. Instead, it emphasised expressing three-dimensional reality through geometrical shapes.

While Spanish artist Pablo Picasso and French artist Georges Braque are credited with formally developing the artistic style, the term itself was coined by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles. He described Braque’s 1908 landscape work by referring to its abstract geometric shapes as “cubes.”

Before the approach gained popularity, French artist Paul Cézanne had been creating Cubist paintings that utilised varying perspectives and geometrical shapes. Picasso also admitted to seeking inspiration from stylised African tribal masks for his non-naturalistic, fractured approach to art. Moving away from realistic portrayals, Cubism presents subjects from multiple perspectives by dividing them into fragments and exploring their essence rather than their actual appearance.

Several categories emerged within the movement over the years. Most significantly, analytic cubism (1907-1912) used a more muted palette and fragmented forms, and synthetic cubism (1912-1914) featured a brighter palette, collage elements and a variety of textures and patterns.

How Cubism came to India

Cubism arrived in India in the 1910s. At times, it is associated with the 14th annual exhibition of The Indian Society of Oriental Art held in Calcutta in 1922, which featured works of artists affiliated with the Bauhaus school (associated with functionality, geometric shapes and abstract art) such as Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, and Indian artists such as Gaganendranath Tagore and Nandalal Bose.

The exhibition led to a dialogue on Cubism in Rupam, the society’s quarterly journal. One article by American art historian Stella Kramrisch explained Gaganendranath’s distinctive brand of Cubism thus: “While European Cubists transform the world into a static ‘vertical-horizontal arrangement’, in Gaganendranath’s works, emotion is ‘transformed into diagonal composition’… (The) expressiveness of his earlier cubist paintings soon gave way to decorative effects where the interpretations of small translucid and semi-opaque cubes helped to conjure up a fairy tale pictorial stage full of whimsical magic.”

Art historian R Siva Kumar also describes Gaganendranath’s pioneering Indian variant of Cubism in a DAG publication, writing, “Gaganendranath himself identified as a Cubist or referred to his work as Cubist on three separate occasions. The first instance was probably in a note behind a painted postcard with geometric architectural structures he sent to the artist Roopkrishna (now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London). In it, he wrote: ‘I am practising Cubism, and this is the result’. The second instance came as an inscription that read ‘Flight of the first Indian Cubist’ beneath a painting depicting a cube-shaped structure with a seated figure, resembling the artist, floating kite-like.”

How Indian artists adapted Cubism

Gaganendranath’s experiments with Cubism resonated with several of his students, including Prosanto Roy, as well as masters from the Santiniketan School of Art, such as Ramkinkar Baij, Asit Kumar Haldar and Nandalal Bose. Stalwart NS Bendre is often credited with introducing Cubism in Baroda at the Faculty of Fine Arts of MS University, which was established in 1950.

Meanwhile, as Indian artists began travelling to Europe and the US, the artistic exchanges also led to stylistic influences of Cubism in their work. Ram Kumar, for instance, studied under French cubist artist Andre Lhote in Paris. Meeting Picasso in France, Paritosh Sen incorporated Cubist elements into his artwork by utilising two-dimensional planes while maintaining an illusion of volume.

While SK Bakra borrowed elements of geometric abstraction and fractured forms, MF Husain experimented with Cubism in his early works, with manipulation of space and dynamic use of colour and bold brushstrokes, even earning him the moniker “Picasso of India”.

Ashish Anand, CEO and MD of DAG, says, “Unlike the West, modernists here styled their Cubist outpourings with a lyricism and elegance that were rooted in the country’s ancient tradition of aesthetics”.

The DAG publication notes: “While some (artists) adopted angular, deconstructed compositions with cubist influences, others blended cubist abstraction through each fragmented form.” It further discusses the fluidity of abstraction that impacted the structural formality of Cubism in India: “Artists like Rabin Mondal delved into totemic abstraction, transforming fragmented figures into potent symbols of collective memory, while Devayani Krishna infused fractured geometries with lyrical textures, adding emotional depth and atmosphere to her compositions.”