Mohan Samant

Mohan Samant was an early Indian modernist painter and a member of the Progressive Artists Group. He was also a lifelong player of the sarangi, an Indian bowed string instrument. He was born in Goregaon, a suburb of Mumbai, India, in 1924. The fourth child of eight, he grew up in a cultured environment. His father was a headmaster and his mother a homemaker. His younger sister, Vasudha Patil, was an accomplished novelist. Samant displayed an early proficiency in and dedication to both music and the visual arts. Samant received his diploma from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1952, where he studied under S.B. (Shankar Balwant) Palsikar. The following year he won the Governor’s Prize at the Bombay Art Society Annual Exhibition. In 1952, Samant joined the Progressive Artists Group and exhibited with them in several shows. He also participated in the Bombay Group, a successor to the Bombay PAG. In 1956, Samant was awarded the Gold Medal at the Bombay Art Society’s group exhibition, the Gold Medal at the Calcutta Art Society show, and the Lalit Kala Akademi All India Award. Samant also participated that year in the seminal exhibition Eight Painters: Bendre, Gaitonde, Gujral, Husain, Khanna, Kulkarni, Kumar, Samant, curated by Thomas Keehn, and in the Venice Biennale. He spent 1957–58 in Rome on a scholarship awarded by the Italian government. In February 1959 a Rockefeller fellowship took him to New York City, where he would remain until 1964. Exhibitions during Samant’s first New York period included what is considered the first showing of the Progressive Artists Group in America, Trends in Contemporary Painting from India: Gaitonde,Husain, Khanna, Kumar, Padamsee, Raza, Samant, Souza, curated by Thomas Keehn and held at the Graham Gallery, New York, as well as A Collection of Contemporary Art (organized by the Art in Embassies Committee), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961), Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1963), and Dunn International: 102 Best Painters of the World, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and the Tate Gallery, London (1963). Samant returned to India briefly in 1964–65 before moving back to New York permanently in 1968. He continued to exhibit his works internationally and experimented with various media and techniques such as collage, wire mesh and thread. He also developed his own style of painting that combined figurative and abstract elements with rich textures and colors. He often drew inspiration from Indian mythology, folklore and culture as well as from his own experiences and observations. In 2000, Samant received the Asian American Heritage Award for lifetime achievement in the arts. In January 2004, not long after a retrospective in India, Samant died in New York. His paintings and sketches are held in various public and private collections around the world.