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The Significance and Relevance of Early Modern Indian Painters to the Contemporary Indian Art
Nilima Sheikh

'The Significance and Relevance of Early Modern Indian Painters to the Contemporary Indian Art', written in 1971, reevaluates the legacies of painting inherited by the artist Nilima Sheikh. Drifting between two inadequate models, one an import of British Colonialism, and another desperate for an identification as ‘Indian’, the artist engages with the works of Raja Ravi Varma, Abanindranath Tagore, Amrita Sher-Gil, Nandalal Bose, and Jamini Roy, as well as the critical and art historical writing surrounding these practices, to offer a revaluation of these legacies and a possible way forward—one that she would go on to articulate in her own decades-long engagement with painting.

Published here for the first time, ‘The Significance and Relevance of Early Modern Indian Painters to the Contemporary Indian Art’ was written as part of Nilima Sheikh’s Master's in Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. The complete facsimile of this dissertation is accompanied by a recent interview with the artist by Nihaal Faizal and Sarasija Subramanian.


Nilima Sheikh was born in 1945 in Delhi. After graduating in History from Delhi University, she trained at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda, from 1965 to 1971. Her paintings, small and large, on handmade paper, canvas panels, or scrolls, are influenced by North Indian, Asian, and European histories of tempera painting. Her visual and textual layerings, using the additive principle, are often marked by an interchange of lore and histories, offering glimpses of a multiple mise-en-scene and a commitment to feminist realities. She has written on art for books and journals and in catalogue essays. She has also illustrated books for children and in the 1990s, as part of a women’s collective, designed for theatre productions.

The Significance and Relevance of Early Modern Indian Painters to the Contemporary Indian Art
Nilima Sheikh


Dissertation #4
(Fine) Arts Dissertations Series

₹ 1300 / € 30 / $ 33

ISBN: 978-81-953472-9-2

Editors: Nihaal Faizal and Sarasija Subramanian
Copy Editor: Stuti Bhavsar
Publication Design: Nihaal Faizal

Co-published with Ark Foundation for the Arts