Daimler Contemporary       
19 January - 3 June 2007

List of Artists

Interview with Anupam Poddar

Exhibition Views

Introduction
 

Jyothi Basu
Constructed to Deconstruct I, 2004
Oil on Canvas
120 x 90 cm

Ravinder Reddy,
Thatupalli Radha, 1995-96
Fiber glass, gold leaf, paint
61 x 86,4 x 111,8 cm

Mrs. Lekha Poddar (Anupam Poddar's mother) began collecting contemporary Indian art during the 1980s, with works by the Progressive Artists' Group and others who were active at the time. Anupam Poddar started to collect around the year 2000, with works by younger artists around his own generation who represented, to quote him, "a vision of India to which I could relate".

He began with a works by the Delhi-based artist like Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta. The Poddars had just moved into a large farmhouse on the outskirts of Delhi, and the idea was to acquire art for their new home. Over the last six years they have been following experimental/cutting edge developments taking place across India. Slowly overcoming inhibitions in terms of subject matter/content and the question of space for proper display of installation and new media art, they have been expanding their collection purposefully.

This is essentially a family collection. Anupam Poddar looks after it and makes choices and decisions in consultation with the family. The artists strongly represented in the collection include Subodh Gupta, Mithu Sen, Bharti Kher, Anita Dube, Sudarshan Shetty and A. Balasubramanium.

At the time of writing the collection holds about 2100 works, including some commissions. Ceramics has been largely excluded as a field, but about 800 works of ethnic or folk art (tribal art) figure in the core collection.

The Poddar Collection applies to Indian exponents of narrative, figurative art, in many cases showing explicitly political commitment, though it also convinced us with the breadth of its interest and an extraordinarily active collecting policy that is not averse to risk.

The collection grows weekly, with additions in the fields of contemporary art and folk art. In future selections from the collection, presented thematically, are also to be accessible to the public in an exhibition venue specially created in New Delhi.

Tamara K.E.
o.T.[Untitled], 2001
Tempera on canvas
100 x 320 cm

David Salle
To be titled #1, #2
Both: 1998
Oil, acrylic on canvas
3 panels each, overall 229 x 460cm

In this case the challenge lay in interrogating the Daimler Art Collection, which concentrates on the abstract avant-garde in the 20th century to the present day, in order to find works in it that could trigger a meaningful and exciting dialogue with the Poddar Collection.

 

As a response to this questions, it seemed an attractive idea to show a large commissioned work by David Salle in public for the first time that otherwise hangs permanently at DaimlerFinancial Services in Berlin. Poster painting for the Indian film industry has regularly provided a key stimulus for Salle's highly allusive painting since the 1980s.

Other links emerged with critically and politically motivated positions in the Daimler Art Collection: K.R.H. Sonderborg, his pupil Tobias Hauser, then artists like Buetti, Herold and Jaar.

As well as this, we are also presenting for the first time a group of large paintings addressing contemporary self-awareness with particularly masculine or feminine characteristics by the Georgian-born painter Tamara K.E., who lives in Düsseldorf. This constellation is complemented by new Daimler Art Collections acquisitions in the field of contemporary Indian art.