State of the Art

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Posts tagged with Francesca Galloway

Asian Art in London 2013 (31/10/2013 – 9/11/2013)

November 4, 2013

Aaina Bhargava of Saffronart introduces Asian Art in London 2013

Asian Art in London

Asian Art in London. Image Credit: http://www.asianartinlondon.com/content/homepage

London: It’s Asian Art in London week, the perfect opportunity to indulge in your appreciation for Asian Art and simultaneously engage with London’s vast network of art institutions that hold various events such as lectures, symposiums, exhibitions, and auctions solely dedicated to Asian Art.

A few South Asian highlights featured include, The Annual Benjamin Zucker Lecture on Mughal Art: Jahangir’s Gulshan Album and its marginal decorations at the Victoria and Albert Museum on Nov. 7th, a lecture on Orchha not Mandu, 1592 not 1634: A Revolutionary View of ‘Malwa’ Painting held at SOAS on Nov. 6th, and a symposium on The Art of Being A Part: Two South African-born Asian Artists in Dialogue – Clifford Charles and Anthony Key on Nov. 9th at the Courtald Institute of Art.

A number of exhibitions featuring South Asian Art are being held including: The Surreal in Indian Painting: Select Works from the Arturo Schwarz and other Private Collections at Prahlad Bubbar, God, Demons and Lovers at Rob Dean Art, Indian Court Painting 16th – 19th Centuries at Sam Fogg, A Prince’s Eye Imperial Mughal Paintings from a Princely Collection Art from the Indian Courts at Francesca Galloway, Modern and Contemporary Indian Miniatures at Grosvenor Gallery, Indian & Islamic Works of Art at Simon Ray Indian and Islamic Works of Art, An Important Group of Sculptures from India, Southeast Asia and China at Jonathan Tucker Antonia Tozer Asian Art, Nature at Alexis Renard and Indian Ivory and Imran Channa at Joost van den Bergh.

The Saffronart London team will be checking out the galleries participating in the Late Night Opening Mayfair tonight (Nov. 4th), hopefully we’ll see you there.

For more information regarding events visit Asian Art in London.

Poetry in Stone: Carved Screens from Sultanate and Mughal India

November 26, 2012

Elisabetta Marabotto of Saffronart on ‘Red Stone’, a two-gallery exhibition of ancient Indian carvings in London

London: The Francesca Galloway and Sam Fogg galleries in London recently concluded a joint exhibition of exquisite Mughal perforated stone screens or ‘jalis’ titled ‘Red Stone: Indian stone carving from Sultante and Mughal India’.

Jalis were a very popular feature in Mughal buildings between the 16th and 18th centuries, mainly used to glorify imperial architecture, and were mostly produced in the Agra and Delhi areas of Northern India.  Jalis had the purpose of separating spaces within buildings to provide privacy, especially for the women of the court, as well as allowing the wind to circulate and dividing ‘divine spaces’ from ‘worldly’ ones.

A note accompanying the exhibition, which coincided with the celebration ‘Asian Art in London’, states, “According to Mughal political thought, a ruler was best represented by his buildings which became memorials to his fame. During the high period of Mughal art the imaginative designs of sandstone and marble jalis achieved a degree of sophistication and refinement not seen elsewhere. Jalis have a contemporary aesthetic which appeals to younger collectors, and have been used in museum installations at The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, The National Gallery of Australia, and the new Islamic Arts wing of the Louvre.”

The perforated stone screens on display in this joint exhibition most probably came from buildings in Agra and Delhi and were earlier part of a private English collection, housed in a country estate in Somerset. The collection includes jalis bearing highly detailed geometric, floral and vase patterns, as well as few frieze fragments from the late 12th and early 13th centuries inscribed with surahs and emblematic sentences from the Koran. All the pieces are carved in the distinctive red sandstone of Northern India.

More information on the exhibition can be found on a New York Times article and the Francesca Galloway and Sam Fogg websites.

Below you can enjoy a selection of the jalis from the exhibition.

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