South Asia
Art from across South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan, from ancient temples to modern movements.
No works indexed yet · 10 related artists
No open-access works for South Asia are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.
About
South Asia's art was shaped by Hindu, Buddhist, Jain and Islamic patrons, often side by side. Sri Lanka's rock fortress of Sigiriya holds 5th-century paintings of cloud maidens, Newar metalworkers in the Kathmandu Valley cast gilded deities for Nepal and Tibet, and Bengal's brick temples are wrapped in terracotta panels.
Modern art in the region grew from debates about tradition and colonial rule. At Santiniketan, Rabindranath Tagore's university became a base for Nandalal Bose and others seeking a pan-Asian modernism, and in 1943 Zainul Abedin drew the victims of the Bengal famine. After independence, painters in Bombay, Lahore, Dhaka and Colombo formed new groups. Sayed Haider Raza distilled painting into the bindu, a central dot, Biren De painted glowing tantric symbols, and Mrinalini Mukherjee knotted dyed fibre into towering forms. Anish Kapoor, born in Mumbai, works with pigment, mirror and void.
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