History of Indian Art Timeline

In south-central India, the Bahmani Sultanate disintegrated during the late 15th century into the Deccan sultanates centred at Bijapur, Golconda, Ahmadnagar, Bidar, and Berar.

Image source: Deccan sultanates

Under the Baridi dynasty of Bidar, bidri ware developed as a metal inlay tradition. Zinc mixed with copper, tin, and lead was inlaid with silver or brass, then treated with a sal-ammoniac-containing mud paste that blackened the base metal.

Mughal miniature painting on paper developed rapidly in the late 16th century by combining existing Indian miniature traditions with the Persian miniature tradition brought to the Mughal court.

Image source: Mughal painting

When Emperor Humayun reestablished the Mughal Empire in 1555, he brought Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad from the renowned atelier of Persian ruler Shah Tahmasp, decisively strengthening Mughal court painting.

During Akbar's reign, the number of court painters grew from about 30 during the creation of the Hamzanama in the mid-1560s to approximately 130 by the mid-1590s.

Only after the Mughal conquest of Ahmadnagar in 1600 did Persian influence patronized by the Turco-Mongol Mughals begin to affect Deccan art substantially.

After Akbar's death, his son Jahangir took the Mughal throne in 1605 and ruled until 1627, continuing the imperial patronage of painting and other fine arts.

Image source: Jahangir

Shah Jahan ruled from 1628 to 1658. His most notable architectural contribution was the Taj Mahal, a landmark of Mughal architecture and one of the best-known works in the history of Indian art.

Image source: Taj Mahal

Aurangzeb forcibly took the throne from Shah Jahan and ruled from 1658 to 1707. His increasingly orthodox Sunni beliefs and the 1680 ban on music and painting contributed to the decline of Mughal patronage of the arts.

Image source: Aurangzeb

Kalighat painting, or Kalighat Pat, originated in 19th-century Bengal near the Kalighat Kali Temple in Kolkata. Initially sold as souvenirs to temple visitors, it developed into a distinct school of Indian painting.

Image source: Kalighat painting

The Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai, the oldest institution of its kind in India, was established in 1850 and became part of the colonial-era expansion of formal art education.

In 1858, the British government assumed direct administrative control of India under the British Raj. Colonial rule had a major impact on Indian art, especially from the mid-19th century onward.

Image source: British Raj

The Bengal School of Art originated primarily in Kolkata and Shantiniketan and flourished across the subcontinent during the British Raj. It was associated with Indian nationalism and sought alternatives to dominant colonial styles.

Image source: Bengal School of Art

As the Swadeshi Movement gained momentum by 1905, Indian artists attempted to revive pre-colonial cultural identities. They rejected the Romanticized style of Company paintings and the mannered work associated with Raja Ravi Varma and his followers.

Abanindranath Tagore led the Bengal School through reworked Asian styles emphasizing Indian nationalism. He is widely described as the father of modern Indian art, while British administrators including E. B. Havell also promoted the movement.

Artists including Rabindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, and Amrita Sher-Gil helped introduce avant-garde Western styles into Indian art while engaging with the country's emerging modern cultural identity.

Image source: Modern Indian painting

Between 1920 and 1925, Gaganendranath Tagore pioneered experiments in modernist painting. From 1925 onward, he developed a complex post-cubist style.

K. C. S. Paniker founded the Progressive Painters' Association in 1944, helping give rise to the Madras movement in Indian art.

India became independent of British rule in 1947. The political transition created a post-colonial context in which artists sought new ways to express Indian experience.

Image source: Indian independence movement

K. H. Ara, S. K. Bakre, H. A. Gade, M. F. Husain, S. H. Raza, and Francis Newton Souza founded the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in 1952 to establish new modes of expression for post-colonial India.

Image source: Bombay Progressive Artists' Group

The National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi was established in 1954, providing a major national institution for collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting modern Indian art.

Although the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group dissolved in 1956, it profoundly influenced the idiom and direction of Indian art in the decades that followed.

In the later 20th century and beyond, painting and sculpture remained important while artists such as Nalini Malani, Subodh Gupta, Narayanan Ramachandran, Vivan Sundaram, Jitish Kallat, G. R. Iranna, Bharati Kher, and Chittrovanu Muzumdar pursued radically new directions.

The National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai was established in 1996, expanding the national network of institutions devoted to modern and contemporary Indian art.

R. Siva Kumar's 1997 book Santiniketan: The Making of a Contextual Modernism introduced Contextual Modernism as a postcolonial critical tool for understanding alternative modernisms in former colonies, particularly the Santiniketan artists.

The Baroda Group was definitively historicized in 1997 through the publication of Contemporary Art in Baroda, an anthology edited by Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh. The volume documented a coalition that included Vivan Sundaram, Bhupen Khakhar, and Nalini Malani and whose history included the 1981 exhibition Place for People.

The National Gallery of Modern Art in Bangalore was inaugurated in 2009, further extending India's public infrastructure for modern and contemporary art.

The foundation of the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art was laid in 2013, marking an effort to create a major institution for modern and contemporary art in Kolkata.