Indian masters on world podiums, country draws foreign artists

It was an eventful year for Indian art with domestic artists gaining international visibility through a series of exclusive shows abroad, even as the country attracted the global art fraternity.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK organised a first public viewing of the final artworks of celebrated artist M F Husain in May this year. The artist who died in London in 2011 aged 95 had completed a residency at the Museum in 1990.
Eight monumental triptych paintings by Husain titled the "Indian Civilization Series," also known as "Vision of India through Mohenjo-Daro to Mahatma Gandhi", was commissioned by steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal's family in 2008 and were never previously seen publicly.

In October, the Guggenheim Museum in New York opened "V S Gaitonde: Painting as Process, Painting as Life," a retrospective of the artist's work. Gaitonde who died in 2001 was not very well known in the US, even though he had travelled to New York in 1964.
Britain's Tate Modern Art Gallery hosted its maiden India exhibition in a new collaboration with Delhi-based collective Khoj. Titled "Word, Sound and Power", the group artshow had debuted at Tate's Project Space Gallery in London in 2013.
The show featured works by eight contemporary artists across disciplines of film, performance, audio, documentary, text and sound to interrogate ties with language and power. Caroline Bergvall, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Amar Kanwar, Nikolaj Bendix Skyum Larsen, Anjali Monteiro and K P Jayasankar, Mithu Sen and Pallavi Paul participated.

"This collaboration points towards an interest shared by both the Tate and the Khoj in socio-political issues of migration, political expression and its articulation through voice and silence," Pooja Sood, Director, Khoj said.

After a gap of two years, India's sole biennale opened its second edition. The 'Kochi Muziris Biennale' showcased works of 94 artists from the world over, including that of Yoko Ono, wife of late Beatles star John Lennon.
Curated by Jitish Kallat on a "Whorled Explorations", theme, the 108-day long art extragavanza took to crowd funding to raise about Rs 15 crore and recieved a shot in the arm when UAE-based Indian businessman T V Narayanan Kutty came forward to provide Rs one crore per year.

The year began with the India Art Fair, one of largest Art Fairs in the country, which in its sixth edition showcased 91 galleries with over 1000 artists.
In the month of February, Delhi played host to INSERT 2014, which brought together a diverse group of international experts and contemporary artists to "inaugurate a re-thinking of the city's cultural infrastructure.