There are a significant number of painters in India who have made adequate contribution to the world of art and are known through out the globe. Painting has a diverse history in the art and culture of India. Beginning from the ancient times through the medieval times and the present modern days, painting has evolved from murals and miniatures to contemporary style with tinges of modern art, which is abstract as well as real. The most popular Painters of India have been mentioned below-
Abanindranath Tagore
Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) is regarded as the founder of the neo-Indian school of painting, known as the Bengal School and is one of the important painters of India. He was a major proponent of Swadeshi values in the tradition of art. That is the reason why he advocated for the Mughal and Rajput styles, which could stop the influx of western ideas of art. He was also regarded as a renowned writer.
Amrita Shergil
Amrita Shergil (1913-1941) can be regarded as one of India`s first modernist painters and is therefore one of the prominent painters of India. She was educated in Florence and Paris and developed a style that was exhibited in her works. She was an avid traveller, which resulted in the production of trilogy of 1938, The Bride`s Toilet, Brahmacharis and Villagers Going to the Market. Special traits in her work were a definite facial type and Physiogamy, which shows her women taking a narcissistic turn. Her artistic venture was more of a hybrid nature incorporating oriental and western backgrounds.
Nandalal Bose
Nandala Bose (1883-1966) is considered as one of the best modern painters of India. He was influenced by the Tagore family and the mural paintings of Ajanta which can be seen in his works. His subjects were basically themes from Indian mythology, villages and the women. He was the principal of the Kala Bhavan at Shantiniketan in the year 1922.
Dhiraj Choudhury
Dhiraj was born in 1936, in Bengal, and is known for his excellent artwork all over the world. Not only he has created wonderful pieces of art and been the ex professor in the College of art New Delhi University, he had also directed many projects on societal values and human race.
Jahar Dasgupta
Jahar Dasgupta is a contemporary painter born in 1942 in Jamshedpur. His paintings convey a message and are straight and firm in their execution. By using soft yet bright transparent colour, he is successful in sending the messages right across. He was trained initially in Shantiniketan under legendary artists like Ramkinkar Baiz and Benode Behari Mukherjee.
Raja Ravi Verma
Raja Ravi Verma (1848-1906) was born in Kilimanoor Palace, and is considered as combining traditionalist`s traits and rationalist tendencies among the moderns. Raja Ravi Verma is recognised by the depiction of scenes from the epics of Ramayana and the Mahabharata. He won the first prize in the Vienna Art Exhibition in 1873, and this brought him into the limelight.
Jatin Das
Jatin Das, was born in Mayurbhanj in Orissa, and has some great artistic achievements into his account. His focus basically lies on man-woman relationships, in different phases of emotional turmoil, crisis, revelation and other moments. Human forms, mostly painted in nudes, sometimes birds and animals constitute his subject of study. Jatin Das with his artistry and creativity is therefore indeed one of the eminent painters of India.
M.F.Hussain
M.F Hussain, born in 1915, is considered one of the most important and criticised artist. Beginning with painting huge cinema posters, he was among the group of artists who wanted to break away from the nationalist traditions of the Bengal school of art, starting an Indian avant-garde in a more widespread manner, international manner. His works have often been disputed by religious organisations. M F Hussain died on June 9th, 2011, at the age of 95, due to a heart attack at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.
Satish Gujral
He was born in Jhelum, a small river town in Pakistan, formerly a part of undivided India in 1925, and recognised as one of the renowned contemporary artists, as well as sculptor, architect and writer and one of the great painters of India. He has experimented with plastic art, sculpture murals and also graphics. He has won the National Award for three times, and exhibited his works in India and abroad. He was also awarded Padma Vibhushan in 1999.
Amrita Shergill
Amrita Shergill was a renowned Indian painter. She was one of the most charismatic and promising Indian artists of the pre-colonial era. Most of her paintings reflect vividly her love for the country and more importantly her response to the life of its people.
Jamini Roy
Jamini Roy was one of the most significant and influential painters of the 20th century. He was born in a middle-class family in 1887 at Beliator village in Bankura district of Bengal. His father Ramataran Roy was an amateur artist who, after resignation from government service, spent the rest of his life in his village amidst the potters.
Tyeb Mehta
Tyeb Mehta was a well known Indian artist, who was known all over the world for his brilliant painting. A multifaceted personality, he also dabbled in filmmaker and made a mark there. He held the record for the highest price for which an Indian painting has ever been sold, in a public auction. It was his triptych painting Celebration that, on being sold for 15 million Indian rupees ($300,000 USD), gave him this honor.
Anjolie Ela Menon
Anjolie Ela Menon is among India's lending contemporary female artists, who have created a name for themselves in the domestic as well as international art scenario. Her works are a part of significant painting collections across the globe. One of her art works, 'Yatra' was recently picked up by the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco at California in the year 2006.
Francis Newton Souza
Born on 12 April 1924 to a Goan couple, Francis Newton Souza was an eminent Indian artist of his time. He was among that early crop of painters who hold the credit of popularizing Indian art in the western countries. Francis Newton Souza was the student of the Sir JJ School of Art in the Mumbai city.
Rameshwar Broota
Born in the year 1941 at Delhi, Rameshwar Broota has emerged as one of the most prominent painters of India in the present times. Having an innate passion for art, he joined the College of Art in the capital city during the year 1964. And he went to become the head of the well-known institute Triveni Kala Sangam devoted to the promotion of art and culture in the year 1967.
SH Raza
S.H. Raza, who was born in the year 1922 as Syed Haider Raza, is a internationally acclaimed Indian painter. Though he has resided and worked from France since the 1950s, yet he maintains close association with his motherland till date. Though he incepted doing figurative paintings, he gradually moved on to abstract later on.
Manjit Bawa
Manjit Bawa, known for his striking portrayal of spirituality and simplicity through his paintings, was a one of the highly-skilled artists India has had. Born in a small town of Dhuri, Punjab; it was tough-going for him to bring out his love for spirituality and nature onto the canvas,
Nandalal Bose
Highly influenced by renowned artist Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose gave India its first experience of modern Indian style of painting. With an exemplary touch of renaissance in Indian painting, Nandalal Bose played a significant role in shaping up the modern face of traditional art through his deep thoughts of nationalism, philosophical inclination,
Bikash Bhattacharjee
Bikash Bhattacharjee, holder of two of the most prestigious awards: National Award and Padma Shri amongst many others, is a renowned Indian painter known for his spectacular depiction of reality as well as surrealism. Despite being born in Kolkata struck amidst a political turmoil and losing his father at an early age didn't stop him from discovering his true calling.
Binod Behari Mukherjee
"The person who is not roused by a pulsating image, a small touch or sound, can make no sense of the word 'beauty'. A person who neither knows, nor thinks beyond his worldly needs has no use for beauty." For someone who spent a majority of his life with weak sight and finally became blind at the age of 50 to produce such an enviable body of works in the field of art and literature.
B. C. Sanyal
Bhabesh Chandra Sanyal, better known to us as B. C. Sanyal, is considered to have ushered in the era of modernism in Indian art. A painter, a sculptor and a teacher of art to three generations of artists, B. C. Sanyal lived through the different partitions that India went through in 1905, 1947 and 1971.
Mukul Chandra Dey
An established artist and one of the brightest students from Santiniketan during Rabindranath Tagore's era, Mukul Chandra Dey was the first Indian to go overseas to study printmaking as a form of art and profession. Mukul Chandra Dey traveled to different cities across America and Japan to learn printmaking
