Mumbai
A Moment in Modernity:
A Show of Sharmila and Haren Thakur
05th – 11th August, 2025
“Today’s artist lives in an era of dissolution without guidance. He stands alone. The old forms are in ruins, the benumbed world is shaken up, the old human spirit is invalidated and in flux towards a new form. We float in space and cannot perceive the new order.”- Walter Gropius,1919
Haren Thakur is a hidden gem from Eastern India. A product of Rabindranath Tagore’s grand vision of a holistic, organic, and nationalist view of an art education the ‘gad’ or hub of a new approach towards Indian art was Santiniketan.
It was from that verdant, lush landscape where learning and education was imparted in the style of the age old traditional Indian system of a ‘gurukul’ that Haren Thakur learnt imbibed and created his own unique visual language.
Everything within and without Santiniketan influenced the young Haren Thakur. Be it the legends like Ramkinkar Baij, Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee or his immediate teachers like Dinkar Kowshik and Sarbari Roy Choudhury.
Haren flowered in the rich and fecund soil of Santiniketan. His love for nature or ‘prakriti’, turning the gaze inwards within his own internal eyes or the tribal communities of Jharkhand which he made his own after establishing his studio in Ranchi in 1976. Ever since, Thakur has been painting, drawing, collaging, and sculpting with a rare consistency.
The artworks on display are a pointer to the unique language of Haren Thakur, where nature, environment, and the relationship between man and nature, the flora and fauna, form an integral part of his visual language.
“Paper and canvas are his playground on which his lines dance.”
The accompanying film Bhaat Ghoom Bagia Jhoom, by Dr. Mandakini Devi, brings alive the essence of ‘Haren the Artist’.
