Group 1890
The GROUP 1890 exhibition was held from 20 to 29 October 1963 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan in New Delhi, India. It was the only exhibition of the artist collective 'group 1890', hence the only existing record of the group's exhibition history in the 1960s contemporary art in India. The group was an entirely male association with 12 members which 'stood passionately and romantically for values of modernism that signaled change'. The members were Raghav Kaneria, M. Reddeppa Naidu, Ambadas Khobragade, Rajesh Mehra, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jagdish Swaminathan, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, S. G. Nikam, Eric Bowen, Jyoti Bhatt, and Balkrishna Patel. All of which participated in this inaugural exhibition.
A meeting of the artist group was held from 12 to 14 May 1967 in Baroda to discuss the possibility of having their second exhibition which did not eventually materialise. Geeta Kapur, the noted female art historian, critic, and curator based in New Delhi, was involved in the said meeting and was captured among the male artists in two photographs collected in the Gulammohammed Sheikh Archive, part of The Baroda Archives digitalised by Asia Art Archive.
The exhibition
The GROUP 1890 exhibition was dedicated to the memory of Georges Braque and was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister Sri Jawaharlal Nehru. It presented 8 to 10 works from each of the 12 artists. Artworks on display included oil paintings, drawings, collages, prints, and sculptures.The exhibition was conceptualised as a ground to showcase the members' artistic creation and as a chance to make the group's manifesto public. A full-page manifesto and an introductory article titled 'Surrounded by Infinity...' written by the surrealist poet Octavio Paz on 12 October 1963 in New Delhi was included in the exhibition catalogue, along with the artist biographies.
Octavio Paz, the then Mexican Ambassador to India, claimed in the introductory article that the artist collective 'group 1890' signified a will of change and freedom in the field of contemporary art in 1960s India. There he wrote, '...1890, which pretends not to be a school, is a movement. A movement which affirms itself as a will of change...The creative act is based upon a radical criticism. Criticism of the world and criticism of the artist and his means of expression...I affirm that this exhibition is one sign of the new time, a time that will be of criticism as well as creation. Something precious is being born with these artists.'
He went on to interpret the spirit of 'group 1890' movement as avant-garde and the inaugural exhibition as a mean to challenge the binary conception of tradition and contemporaneity, 'It is not difficult to find in the works of this exhibition the echoes, the prolongations and influences of universal contemporary painting. These young men, with a full conscience, have grasped modern language. Who will draw to reproach them? There is no other language, it is the only one alive. And how not to see the frequency with which that language ceases to be a prescription and becomes a sign of self? Furthermore, what is called tradition is nothing else but an ensemble or succession of works. That is, of inventions and variations on those inventions, contemplated from an ever-changing point of view: the present. Even if art critics and historians feel themselves installed in eternity. Tradition: change. 1890: breakthrough and restart.'
A review of the GROUP 1890 exhibition written by Charles Fabri, Hungarian Archaeologist and Art Historian in India, was published in The Statesman on 21 October 1963
group 1890
The term 'group 1890' was used to describe both the exhibition title, the artist collective, and a movement these artists provoked. 'group 1890' as an artist collective has 12 members, mainly artists from Delhi and Bombay. Many of them were graduated from the University of Baroda and were in their early 30s when the GROUP 1890 exhibition was held at Lalit Kala Akademi. The group was described as progressive and against the Bengal School. Some of the members continued their art practice after the group was disintegrated. These artists became respected names in the field of contemporary art in India.This artist collective was the brain child of Jagdish Swaminathan and formed in a meeting of artists held at Bhavnagar on 25–26 August 1962. The name 'group 1890' was derived from the number of the house of J. Pandya, where the artists gathered and drafted their manifesto. The 1962 Bhavnagar meeting "was the outcome of prolonged discussions through over a period of two years between like-minded artists on the situation existing in modern Indian art. Having come to a common understanding regarding the vitiating influences which hinder the unfolding of authentic development in art, it was decided to launch the group 1890 movement."
The group's manifesto was discussed at the Bhavnagar meeting and later adopted in New Delhi on 19 July 1963, a few months before the group's inaugural exhibition.
Members
All 12 members of 'group 1890' participated in this exhibition. They were:- Raghav Kaneria
- M. Reddeppa Naidu
- Ambadas Khobragade
- Rajesh Mehra
- Gulam Mohammed Sheikh
- Jagdish Swaminathan
- Himmat Shah
- Jeram Patel
- S. G. Nikam
- Eric Hubert Bowen
- Jyoti Bhatt
- Balkrishna Patel
Raghav Kaneria