PAINTING A LARGER PICTURE

We explore Chennai through an artistic lens, tracing the major changes over the last two decades

- Apurva P

TODAY, THE ANCIENT and the contemporary works walk hand in hand in Chennai—the kolam designs share space with immersive projections, and temple imagery engages in conversation with international contemporary practices.

However, it was not an overnight transformation but rather a steady one—a movement that began with conviction and has since widened to embrace global influences, younger collectors, and new forms of practice. Speaking to a mix of curators and gallery representatives in Chennai reveals how much has changed and how much remains tied to deep cultural roots.

The foundations of Chennai’s modern art story can be traced to the intellectual ferment around the Government College of Arts and Crafts, led by KCS Paniker. Out of that milieu emerged the Madras Movement, which sought to give modern Indian art a distinctly southern identity, balancing Tamil culture, folk motifs, and philosophical ideas with the abstract languages of European modernism. “When we first became involved in the art world in the 1950s and ’60s, Madras had a very different landscape. There were no galleries in the commercial sense and, in fact, no real art market in the country,” recalls Anahita Daruwala Banerjee, the third-generation gallerist and owner of Artworld and Sarala’s Art International, one of the oldest modern art galleries in India. “Artists often struggled to find spaces to show their work. Madras, however, was intellectually alive. Out of this spirit arose what we now call the Madras Movement—a synthesis of indigenous tradition, Tamil culture, and abstraction that gave a unique identity to modern art from the South.” At that time, selling a canvas was rare, but the belief in shaping a new Indian modernism sustained the scene.