Nature Morte launches Salon Series with exhibition showcasing works of Picasso, Renoir

Mumbai, Aug 18 (PTI) Nature Morte's new vertical 'Salon Series', which aims to bridge Indian and international modernism for the Indian collector, launched here with an exhibition showcasing works of Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Eugene Delacroix, along with Manjit Bawa and Tyeb Mehta to name a few.

The exhibition, titled "Salon: The India Way" and curated by Poonji Nath, brings together modernist works from Europe and India in the style of the historic Paris Salon - "densely hung, unapologetically abundant, and intellectually charged".

Borrowing from the Paris Salon, the exhibition seeks to reclaim the Salon’s original intent: to be a site of public encounter, artistic contestation, and aesthetic possibility.

The initiative, led by Devashi Jain, will unfold through curated sales, salon-style shows, and advisory services, with its inaugural exhibition.

“Indian collectors have long engaged with Western art abroad, but few platforms within India offer consistent access to blue-chip international artists. 'Salon: The India Way' challenges that gap, showing that a Pablo Picasso can hang alongside a Bharti Kher in the same home,” Jain said in a statement.

While the 18th- and 19th-century Salons shaped art history in the West, "Salon: The India Way" reflects on what it means to revisit this structure today, from another geography and another gaze.

Featuring works by Alberto Giacometti, Paul Signac, Ram Kumar, Zarina Hashmi, FN Souza, and Sadanand Bakre, among others, the show invites viewers to see modernism as a shared, simultaneous movement rather than a one-way inheritance from West to East.

The exhibition, which opened on August 15, places Indian modernists alongside their European contemporaries - "not in a gesture of comparison, but of co-presence".

It will come to an end on September 15. PTI MAH MAH MAH