India, March 21 -- In the summer of 1954, the All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society in New Delhi was showing an exhibition of paintings by a few of the emerging Indian artists.

The building of the Arts & Crafts Society, often referred to by its acronym, AIFACS, stood across the road from the Parliament House in Lutyens' Delhi. Among the artists at the AIFACS exhibition taking place in the scorching heat of April were a few members of the recently formed Progressive Artists' Group.

Founded in Mumbai seven years earlier during the Partition, the Progressive Artists' Group's motto was to liberate Indian art from the rigid confines of European traditions, create a new Indian modern art movement and make art relevant to the Indian realities....