PARIS.- From June 23rd to August 28th 2016, Artcurial is paying tribute to contemporary Indian artistic creation. Throughout the summer, amongst the various cultural events organised at the Artcurial library, the auction house hosts an exhibition called, Indian dreaming, Contemporary Artists, the Invention of a Tradition. Nineteen artworks, mainly paper, have been gathered and signed by nine Indian artists including Jivya Soma Mashe, Jangarh Singh Shyam and Ram Singh Urveti.

In India, contemporary art from local culture is known as ‘popular’ contemporary art. Just like ‘outsider’ art, this original style of popular art is becoming more and more visible on the international art scene and can be viewed at the Venice biennale and Hayward gallery in London. Two Parisian exhibitions have also contributed to the international success of this type of art: Les magiciens de la Terre held in 1989 at the Centre Pompidou, and more recently, Autres maîtres de l’Inde, in 2010 held at the Musée du Quai Branly.

The exhibition organised by Artcurial particularly focuses on the art of the Warli and the Gond tribes and will reflect the art of painters, story-tellers, magicians and female painters from Mithila.

Hervé Perdriolle, the curator of the exhibition discovered popular contemporary Indian art in 1996. He studied this style of art for three years and when he returned to France, he organised several exhibitions at his Parisian gallery and at the same time also organised the first Artcurial auctions focussing on Modern and Contemporary Indian Art in 2007 and 2008.

Over the last ten years, Indian art and more widely, tribal contemporary art has gained a strong following amongst collectors. In the past thirty years, the number of artists from Indian tribal communities such as Pardhan, Gond and Bhil have been able to move to cities to create in a professional way. The experience of living in a city, the interaction with leading figures of the art world and the discovery of the art market and use of modern materials has offered new horizons for these artists.

This is the case for Jangarh Singh Shyam, a Gond artist. He was greatly influenced by Australian aborigine art which he mixes with the myths of his own culture showing representations of trees, animals, Pardhan Gond mythological gods and city life scene. The Pardhan Gond tribe didn’t have any visual tradition before and Jangarh was one of the first to create using gouache in paper, paint on canvas and drawing and serigraphy. Just as he started making a name for himself in the Indian art scene, several other members of his community took him a role model and copied his style, thus creating a collective style called ‘Gong Painting.’

Jivya Soma Mashe is another major figure of the popular contemporary Indian art scene. His work was presented in France for the first time during the exhibition Les magiciens de la terre. The artist originates from the Warli tribe from Maharashatra. He has been passionate about painting since he was young, a form of art which was previously for women only and was passed down from mother to daughter. Jivya taught himself and used painting to express himself artistically. His artworks offer a new vision of traditional iconography to illustrate representations of goddesses (two triangles on top of each other like an egg-timer, with fine arms and legs and a tiny head.) He also invented a new stylistic vocabulary. From 1970, he concentrated on painting narrative scenes full of traditional iconography to depict hunting, fishing and travel scenes. This is shown with Fishnet, a painting on canvas made in 2015 using acrylic paint and cow manure.

The works on show are for sale.