What is more conspicuous in the show than evidence of local or regional influence, however, is the effect of European and American styles on the 13 artists at hand, all of whom have had high-profile careers within India and most of whom have exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe, the United States, and Japan.
As the artists range in age from about 35 to almost 90, the show also works as an abbreviated survey of the post-World War II evolution of modern Indian art -- and of painting in particular.
The older artists, who are unfortunately represented by just one painting each, were concerned with exploring the possibilities of European-style abstraction. A small cityscape by Kattingeri Krishna Hebbar (1911-1996) shows the influence of Post-Impressionist French artists such as Cezanne and Bonnard.
Canvases by Bal Chhabda (b. 1923) -- an almost indecipherably abstracted, expressionistically painted still-life -- and Tyeb Mehta (b. 1925) -- a flattened, iconic female figure in high-keyed colors divided by a blue diagonal -- reveal the impact of Cubism and Abstract Expressionism.
M. F. Husain (b. 1915), who began his career painting billboards that advertised movies, represents a transition from formal preoccupations to more culturally provocative kinds of image-making. His Pop-style painting from 1983 offers a montage of a gun-toting actor-hero, a red-haired cartoon girl, and a hand gripping a pistol.
Except for Anil Revri (b. 1956), whose dark picture of atmospheric space underlying a loosely gridded network of dripped paint emphasizes formalist composition, the other painters assert representational imagery with references to Indian history and tradition. A painting by Bhupen Khakhar (1934-2003) portraying a well-to-do Parsi family as a group of little, cartoonish figures in a mysteriously vacant, green landscape is a gently satiric update of Indian miniature painting. Complicated, washy watercolors by Nalini Malani (b. 1946) in which modern and mythic images are layered similarly bring together past and the present.
