India Contemporary art
Arun Bose was a prominent Indian artist born in Dhaka, then part of British India (now Bangladesh). He received his art education in Calcutta at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, graduating in 1955. Thereafter, he actively created and taught in Calcutta for the next seven years. In 1962, he travelled to the West where he learnt etching and studied mural techniques at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His many prints were made in aquatint and etching techniques with simultaneous colour printing. He later moved to New York, where he studied at the Pratt Graphic Centre and in 1968 received a scholarship from the Third John D. Rockefeller. He was also part of Robert Blackburn's workshop and taught printmaking himself at Queens College.
Arun Bose's paintings and prints are characterised by bright colours and abstraction, making his work unique and important in the art world.
Anish Kapoor is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art.
Kapoor became known in the 1980s for his geometric or biomorphic sculptures using simple materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment and plaster. These early sculptures are frequently simple, curved forms, usually monochromatic and brightly coloured, using powder pigment to define and permeate the form.
Since 1995, he has worked with the highly reflective surface of polished stainless steel. These works are mirror-like, reflecting or distorting the viewer and surroundings. Over the course of the following decade Kapoor's sculptures ventured into more ambitious manipulations of form and space.
Bharti Kher is a contemporary artist. In a career spanning nearly three decades, she has worked across painting, sculpture and installation. Throughout her practice she has displayed an unwavering relationship with the body, its narratives, and the nature of things. Inspired by a wide range of sources and making practices, she employs the readymade in wide arc of meaning and transformation. Kher's works thus appear to move through time, using reference as a counterpoint and contradiction as a visual tool.
Wolfgang Laib is a contemporary German artist. He is known for his minimalistic and meditative installations that often incorporate natural materials, such as pollen, beeswax, and rice.
Laib studied medicine before turning to art, and his interest in the natural sciences has influenced his artistic practice. He is particularly interested in the connections between the human body, nature, and spirituality, and his work often explores themes of ritual, transformation, and transcendence.
One of Laib's best-known works is "Pollen from Hazelnut," an installation in which he collected pollen from hazelnut trees in the surrounding landscape and displayed it in a large, shallow wooden container. The work is intended to evoke a sense of the cyclical nature of life and the interconnectedness of all living things.
Laib has exhibited his work in museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. He represented Germany in the 1982, Venice Biennale and was included with his works in the Documenta 7 in 1982, and then in the Documenta 8 in 1987. In 2015, he was awarded the Praemium Imperiale, one of the world's most prestigious art prizes.
