129th All India Annual Art Exhibition of The Bombay Art Society opens Online

BAS announces the Annual Art Awards to 50 Artist/ Artworks with Cash Prize and GOLD, SILVER & BRONZE Medals!

Governor of Maharashtra flags off the month-long Online art exhibition to be held from 25^th March till 25^th April 2021 on http://www.bombayartsociety.org

by Suman Gupta

Mumbai,March 2021: The Bombay Art society (BAS), founded in 1888, is the oldest art institution in the Asian Subcontinent promoting visual arts since last 133 years uninterruptedly. Society’s all India annual art exhibition is the important art event in the art world in the country since it started in 1889; today also it has maintained its nature of mega exhibition for the art fraternity in India. The Bombay art society is hosting the annual exhibition since 1889, when there was not a single art gallery in the country, there were no art magazines like today, and there were no art institutions as such functioning in a big way like Lalit Kala Akademi and many other art institutions today.  This year, due to Covid pandemic, The Bombay Art Society has decided to continue this historical tradition of Annual art show and is presenting 129th All India Annual Art Exhibition online from today- 25th March 2021. Along with the exhibition, BAS also announced the Annual Awards which was given to 50 Artist/ Art Works. The Chief Guest of the event was his excellency, The governor of Maharashtra Shri Bhagat Singh Koshyari at The Bombay Art Society’s beautiful complex in the Bandra Reclamation, Mumbai. All the selected artworks are now displayed in the exhibition online on the society’s website (http://www.bombayartsociety.org).

Shri Bhagat Singh Koshyari explained, ‘BAS, is the biggest association in India and due to which many Artists Nationally and Internationally have got identity in the Art fraternity.  Because of the pandemic BAS has also faced many difficulties but looking at the enthusiasm of the organisation for art, they have decided to exhibit it online and I congratulate them for the Art Exhibition and wish them all the luck to organise the same every year and keep on giving platform to the budding artists of the world.’

Total 50 artworks from selected 500 paintings, graphics, photography and sculptures are presented various awards like, the awards includes the most coveted ‘Governor’s Award’ which is sponsored by Governor of Maharashtra for the last 129 years and the award was given to Artist Chandan Bhandari along with Gold Medal. The Bombay Art Society’s Silver and Bronze medals was given to Chitranjan Moharana and Rabi Gupta respectively. The Lalit Kala Akademi Award for Best Painting was given to Bapu Baviskra. The total cash prices of 50 awards in professional and student’s categories is above 4.5 Lakh.

Rajendra Patil, President, BAS, explains, ‘Every year, we would receive artworks for first round online and then for final round, we used to receive physical artworks at society’s office. All that was exceedingly difficult this year due to pandemic. There are many pros and cons of physical exhibition and online exhibition. This year, due to online, nature of the exhibition, the paintings and sculptures are received not only from all over India but even Indian artists staying in overseas countries also send their artworks for the show. This year, we received more than 3600 artworks entries including paintings, sculptures, graphics, photographic works. More than 1500 artists send the 3600 entries, out of which roughly, 500 artworks are selected for the exhibition by judges panel’.

The All India Annual Art Exhibition of the Bombay Art Society has inspired hundreds of artists and shaped their art journey in their formative years. Today’s many great artist’s, big names in the art field who are well-known internationally have once been associated with society’s annual art exhibition. In their formative years, many stalwarts such as J. P Gangooly-1910, Ravi Shankar Rawal-1917, H. Majumdar-1921, A. X. Trindad-1929, Amrita Sher-Gil-1937, Prof. Langhammer-1938, N. S. Bendre-1941, K.K. Hebbar-1947, S. H. Raza-1948, K.H. Ara-1952, Mohan Samant-1953, Jatin Das-1964, Prabhakar Kolte-1970 has received Bombay Art society’s awards including governor’s award and Bombay Art society’s gold medal. In the last 133 years, society have seen many ups and down but never swayed away from its main objective of promoting young talent in the field of visual art. This show is considered as a talent hunt and this is the only exhibition of this magnitude in our country where more than 3000 artworks entries from participating artists are received every year.

Every year, BAS used to have jury members invited from different parts of India; again because of pandemic, they avoided this travelling and staying by senior artists, art writers who goes jury every year. This year, BAS have inhouse judges panel that included – Prof. Anil Naik, who is the chairman of the Bombay Art Society, and former head of painting dept, Sir J J School of arts, Prof. Surendra Jagtap, the treasurer of the Bombay Art society. Prof. Surendra Jagtap is the Principal of  J K academy of Art and Design, Mumbai and the former principal of L S Raheja School of Art, Mumbai. The other Jury member is the Secretary of the Bombay Art Society, well-known sculptor, Shri Chandrajit Yadav, many of whose monumental sculptural works are installed all over the country. The other Jury Members are Jt. Secretary, the Bombay art society, Shri Ajinkya Chaulkar, a well-known sculptor and Vikrat Manjrekar, committee member of the Bombay Art Society and sculptor. All of them at some point or other, have studied art at sir J J School of art and are known for their decades of artistic finesse.