The heavy presence of The Progressive Movement continues to live in and colour the minds of each of us in the art world in India.  And it is usually presumed that while the legacy lives on, the artists have all gone.  Thus it is all the more interesting that the one remaining artist of that set, Manohar Mhatre, now 89, is still living and practising.  Chosen to have long self-marginalised himself, he is finally showing his works in a retrospective solo after decades!

A living chronicler of the times that formulated much of Indian contemporary art, a student of Gaitonde, and himself the professor of later abstractionists such as Prabhakar Kolte, Mhatre has been gently persuaded to bring forth and display 50 years of his works, from his initial time at The Sir JJ School of Art to the later years as a practicing professional. To view his works at this show is to sense the links that have remained and continue to guide the history of Indian abstract painting.  The intertextuality that his canvases exhibit – the deep influences of Gaitonde and the seeming arguments that Mhatre’s paintings have with the earlier master’s works, as well as the many different technical and philosophical paths that Mhatre takes them down – is a history in colour that no interested mind can afford to miss. 

Some years younger than the heavy weights such as Gaitonde and Souza, Mhatre it seems was almost destined to carry the legacy of The Progressives on his lean, albeit talented, shoulders.  He brings alive the world of Gaitonde and the sadly diffused world of legends like the great Ambadas and others, and his works clearly link them to the contemporary abstractionists.  Coming to the show is like viewing the history of Indian abstract art.