Mahatma Gandhi, born in 1869 and assassinated by Hindu extremists in 1948, continues to be an inspiration for historians , activists , poli...
Mahatma Gandhi, born in 1869 and assassinated by Hindu extremists in 1948, continues to be an inspiration for historians, activists, politicians, economists, philosophers, environmentalists, filmmakers – and artists.
Sumathi Ramaswamy’s Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience reveals the ways in which Gandhi has served as a muse for painters, sculptors and multi-media artists over the decades. The book comprises 131 examples of paintings, sculptures, installations and multi-media works on Gandhi.
One of the aims of the book is to spotlight “the labour of art in producing the phenomenon that we name the Mahatma”, Ramaswamy writes in her introduction. “Gandhi is arguably the most analysed Indian of the twentieth century, and my fellow historians and other social scientists have produced an enormous body of important scholarship on the man and his movement from which I have benefitted,” adds Ramaswamy, who is a James B Duke Distinguished Professor of History at Duke University. “But the deep suspicion of the image that is ingrained across the social sciences, and indeed, an unfounded conviction regarding its irrelevance, has meant that the labour of art in producing the phenomenon that we name the Mahatma has been largely ignored.”
Here are five instances from Gandhi in the Gallery: The Art of Disobedience that pay tribute to and interpret the icon...
