History of Art Timeline at the Met

The Bombay Progressives

During the 1930s and '40s, a number of communist groups were active in the cultural arena in India. Along with theater professionals and writers, visual artists joined together under the banner of "progressive" and identified with Marxism. In Bombay in 1947, Francis Newton Souza (1924–2002), Maqbool Fida Husain (born 1915), and others formed the Progressive Artists' Group. They had leftist leanings, rejected the nationalist art of the Bengal School, and embraced international modern art practices. Over the years, Souza gained international notoriety for his erotic and religious paintings that were informed by a variety of styles, including Expressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, and Primitivism.

Metropolitan Museum Timeline