Mohan Samant was an early Indian modernist painter and member of the Progressive Artists Group.
16 Facts About Mohan Samant
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Mohan Samant was a lifelong player of the sarangi, an Indian bowed string instrument.
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In 1952, Mohan Samant joined the Progressive Artists' Group and exhibited with them in several shows, including the 1953 exhibition, Progressive Artists' Group: Gaitonde, Raiba, Ara, Hazarnis, Khanna, Husain, Mohan Samant, Gade, at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai.
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Mohan Samant participated in the Bombay Group, a successor to the Bombay PAG.
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In 1956, Mohan Samant was awarded the Gold Medal at the Bombay Art Society's group exhibition, another at the Calcutta Art Society show, and the Lalit Kala Akademi All India Award.
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That same year, he took part in the seminal exhibition, Eight Painters: Bendre, Gaitonde, Gujral, Husain, Khanna, Kulkarni, Kumar, Mohan Samant, curated by Thomas Keehn, and in the Venice Biennale.
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Mohan Samant was one of only two newcomers included in the exhibition, and was singled out for special recognition in the Time article on the show.
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Mohan Samant was profiled again in the magazine a year later.
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Mohan Samant settled in New York, where he continued to work and exhibit internationally.
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In 2000, Mohan Samant received the Asian American Heritage Award for lifetime achievement in the arts.
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In January 2004, not long after a retrospective in India, Mohan Samant died in New York.
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Mohan Samant participated in the seminal international exhibitions of twentieth-century Indian modernism.
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Mohan Samant's art is, instead, determinedly far-reaching and inquisitive, and is inspired by the whole history of human visual creativity.
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Mohan Samant stated straightforwardly that his sources derived from five thousand years of art from varied civilizations.
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From his first showing until 1953, Mohan Samant took part in exhibitions around the world, held in galleries and museums in Canada, the United States, England, India and Japan.
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Mohan Samant's work is in such public collections as the Museum of Modern Art the Hirshhorn Museum and Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art.