The early 1940s aggressively mark a point of departure in the history of Indian art. In the early years of this decade, small groups of artists wrested the initiative away from institutional structures like the salons, art schools & from the picture of the artist as a visionary. Rabindranath & Abanindranath as artist-visionaries had inspired art as vocation linked to larger causes, a proposition that was gradually contested & debated. ...

Among the Santiniketan artists, Benode Behari Mukherjee & Ramkinkar Baij stand out with their experimental flamboyance. A student of Kala Bhavan in 1917, Benode Behari resisted attitudes of received wisdom. Benode Behari eschewed mythological & historical themes with the same spirit of independence with which he refused to be drawn into the nationalist stream. Benode Behari’s sympathy lay in the evocations of nature, particularly of his travels in Bihar, Bengal ...