The collections of NGMA and its regional centers comprise around 17,000 art objects - paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photographs, and installations, essentially by Indian artists, built over the years through gifts, purchases, and permanent loans. It includes the works of about 2000 artists from India and abroad.
Collection of modern art before NGMA formation The National Gallery of Modern Art began its systematic acquisition of modern arts by purchasing Amrita Sher-Gil's paintings. Among the 161 paintings handed over to the National Gallery of Modern Art, Sher-Gil and Tagore's paintings comprised more than half of the museum's collection. There are 33 paintings purchased by the government from Egan and 33 paintings donated by Sher-Gil's father, Umrao Singh. Umrao Singh offered this work to the government with a precondition that it should also buy the husband's work:
“They serve along with her early works to show the development of her art and talent… But if her later works are not actually acquired by our nation, then what good will the old style work, which she herself did not value, be.” Nehru decided to solve the issue by promising Dr. Egan the requested amount of Rs. 50,000. The money was taken from the National Museum funds to acquire the Amrita Sher-Gil collection, which became the first step towards a state collection of modern art. The year between 1950 and 1954 saw the acquisition of the same number of works by the artist Abanindranath Tagore. Abdur Rahman Chughtai was represented by ten paintings and Jamini Roy and Nandalal Bose by eight paintings each. In 1953, in addition to Amrita's works, a collection of 66 paintings, sketches and drawings by Abanindranath Tagore were offered to the government for purchase. Pratima Tagore, Abanindranath's sister, offered her collection of 66 works of her brother to the government for Rs. 30,000. The paintings were stored at the Central Asian Antiquities Museum and shown occasionally at UNESCO meetings at the Parliament House. The National Gallery of Modern Art finally opened at the Jaipur House, on 29 March 1954, under the administration of the government and with an inaugural ceremony by Dr. Humayun Kabir, the then secretary of the Ministry of Education.
Paintings The strength of the NGMA collection is its representation of the evolution of modern Indian art. The gallery has paintings by artists including
Thomas Daniell,
Raja Ravi Verma,
Abanindranath Tagore,
Rabindranath Tagore,
Rajkumar Sangwan,
Nandalal Bose,
Jamini Roy,
Amrita Sher-Gil,
Upendra Maharathi and various other artists. The earliest are the indigenous schools of great Indian Miniatures: the vibrant
Company,
Kalighat and
Tanjore schools of paintings. Academic Realists,
Raja Ravi Varma, and those trained in the British art schools like M. F. Pithawala, Pestonjee Bomonjee,
Hemen Majumdar amongst others contribute to a substantial presence. The next important phase of modern Indian artist, the
Bengal School which countered the values of academic realists, is strongly represented by Abanindranath Tagore and his followers M. A. R Chughtai, Kshitindra Majumdar and others. The
Santiniketan movement explored new
aesthetic dimensions in its celebration of the environment, and its masters are
Nandalal Bose,
Ramkinkar Baij and
Benode Behari Mukherjee. Even as the Santineketan artists flourished, four individual and original articulations of modernism emerged in the mid 1920s and 1930s. They are Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil and Jamini Roy. The NGMA has major collections of these artists oeuvre. 1940s onward saw the emergence of different artists groups in major cities. The Progressive Artists Group in Mumbai with
M. F. Husain,
F. N. Souza,
K. H. Ara,
S. H. Raza, the Calcutta group with Gopal Ghose, Paritosh Sen and Prodosh Das Gupta were significant in livening up the art scene of the period. Following the spirit of group activity,
K. C. S. Paniker along with
S. G. Vasudev,
Paris Viswanathan and K. Ramanujan set up the idyllic artists' commune in Cholamandal, near
Chennai. The art of the 1950s and 1960s saw the rise of Indian abstract art and a pendulum swing between international modernism and traditional roots. The new artistic expressions are represented in the NGMA collection in the works of
Biren De, G. R. Santosh,
V. S. Gaitonde,
Tyeb Mehta,
Satish Gujral,
Akbar Padamsee,
N. S. Bendre,
K. K. Hebbar,
Sailoz Mookherjea,
Krishen Khanna and
Ram Kumar. The NGMA also has some of the best works of
K. G. Subramanyan,
J. Swaminathan,
A. Ramachandran and others. There is also a representative collection of artists who explored expressionism, surrealism, fantasies as well as pop art, during the 1960s and 1970s. Among other noted artists
Ganesh Pyne,
Bhupen Khakhar,
G. M. Sheikh,
Prabhakar Barwe,
Arpita Singh,
Rameshwar Broota,
Jogen Chowdhury,
Bikash Bhattacharjee,
Nalini Malani,
Vivan Sundaram,
Paramjeet Singh, etc. are part of the collection. Contemporaries like
Jitish Kallat,
Jayashree Chakravarty,
Atul Dodiya,
Anju Dodiya,
Chittrovanu Mazumdar,
Subodh Gupta,
Pushpamala N. and
Riyas Komu are also represented. Printmaking has been a strong current in modern Indian art. The museum has a collection of graphic prints of artists such as
Jyoti Bhatt,
Somnath Hore,
Krishna Reddy,
Anupam Sud, and
Laxma Goud.
Sculpture The NGMA has a collection of modern sculptures by sculptors like
D. P. Roy Choudhury,
Chintamoni Kar and
Ramkinkar Baij. The NGMA holds a rich and varied collection of works of the major sculptors of the country with D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Ramkinkar Baij, Pradosh Das Gupta, Shankoo Chaudhuri,
Meera Mukherjee,
Amarnath Sehgal, Piloo Pochkhanwala, A. Davierwalla, Mahendra Pandya, Nagji Patel, Balbir Kat, Latika Kat, P. V. Jankiram, Nandgopal, and later contemporaries like Himmat Shah,
Madan Lal,
Mrinalini Mukherjee,
Sudarshan Shetty, Subodh Gupta, Prithpal Singh Ladi, and Karlo Antao amongst other eminent sculptors, tracking the developments in the plastic arts. Painters, who have made significant contributions in sculpture, have been collected by NGMA like
K. G. Subramanyan and
Satish Gujral, amongst others.
Photography The NGMA has a large collection of photographs by
Lala Deen Dayal, one of the pioneers of photography in India. The NGMA began collecting photographs as an art form during the late 1970s. The collection is small, yet distinguished.
Raja Deen Dayal's photographs of the regal life of early 20th century Hyderabad are treasure. So are the photographs of contemporary India by
Raghu Rai, and modern cinema by
Nemai Ghosh and
Dayanita Singh. The collection also includes sculptures, graphics and paintings by international modern artists such as
Jacob Epstein,
Giorgio de Chirico,
Sonia Delaunay,
Antoni Tàpies,
Robert Rauschenberg, Se Duk Lee, D. C. Daja, Peter Lubarda, Kozo Mio,
George Keyt and Fred Thieler. ==Gallery==