Group 1890

GROUP 1890
DateOctober 20–29, 1963 (1963-10-20 – 1963-10-29)
VenueLalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan
LocationNew Delhi
 India

The GROUP 1890 exhibition was held from 20 to 29 October 1963 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan in New Delhi, India. It was the only exhibition of the artist collective 'group 1890', hence the only existing record of the group's exhibition history in the 1960s contemporary art in India. The group was an entirely male association with 12 members which 'stood passionately and romantically for values of modernism that signaled change'.[1] The members were Raghav Kaneria, M. Reddeppa Naidu, Ambadas Khobragade, Rajesh Mehra, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Jagdish Swaminathan, Himmat Shah, Jeram Patel, S. G. Nikam, Eric Bowen, Jyoti Bhatt, and Balkrishna Patel. All of which participated in this inaugural exhibition.

A meeting of the artist group was held from 12 to 14 May 1967 in Baroda to discuss the possibility of having their second exhibition which did not eventually materialise. Geeta Kapur, the noted female art historian, critic, and curator based in New Delhi, was involved in the said meeting and was captured among the male artists in two photographs [2][3] collected in the Gulammohammed Sheikh Archive, part of The Baroda Archives digitalised by Asia Art Archive.

  1. ^ "Journal of Arts & Ideas, issues 27-28, March 1995, page 147. -- Journal of Arts and Ideas -- Digital South Asia Library". dsal.uchicago.edu. Retrieved 25 December 2018.
  2. ^ "Meeting of Group 1890". Asia Art Archive. Retrieved 27 February 2023.
  3. ^ "Meeting of Group 1890". Asia Art Archive. Retrieved 27 February 2023.