began to revolve his work around it. Most of them chose works of those western artists whose creative directions had imbibed Asian or African or Mexican sensibilities and began to feel them selves at home. Some fell for those western creative directions which they felt matched their angry-young-man or liberated or leftist personality image which they wanted to project.
During the west-attraction years, still in and out of their formative years, with wavering faith in their own thought process, many artists reached Paris, London and other art centers of Europe on cultural scholarships. Most of them returned after two to three years, converted. Some came back disillusioned. Some got married there to stay back along with some others who had migrated there to practice art as freelancers. They preferred to uproot themselves from the nourishment of their cultural resource & cultural inheritance.
There were many who did not choose to go. They adopted western mediums and techniques but searched for creative directions from within, around and from

the ever regenerating creative visual resource in the country. They did not however close themselves from the world winds. They were sidetracked for some time by fashion-wave and hearsay art connoisseurs and university English honors’ graduates & M.A English, art historians. But these artists persisted and became the first Indian Contemporaries after independence.
When the creative compulsions and needs of expression could not be satisfied by picture-making only with borrowed ingredients, the Indian artists started re-searching indigenous and traditional creative visual cultural resource. Some adopted it in their work and some interpreted it for their expression. This period of introspection arrived because of the reaction to the western derived art and in search of an indigenous identity.
The exponents of the introspection did not suggest withdrawal or isolation from the currents of the world art scenario. Some of the artists, who had already established their creative visual identity in pursuit of western creative directions, chose to search again their creative

visual imagery for expression, realising the validity of introspection.
In India the creative visual directions of the past, present and future coexist despite a reaction stance that may prevail against any one of these. You will still come across adherents of Bengal school which was more inclined to traditional directions available in India and the East. Such tolerance and coexistence enrich and smoothly fill the gaps in the continuity in creative visual imagery.
Francis Newton Souza, I believe, was the prodigal son of Indian Contemporary Art in its formative years after independence. No Indian contemporary artist, after independence, had so much creative energy, revolting personality, capacity to work & flight in his imagination & expression. Unfortunately, for Indian Contemporary Art of formative years after Independence, he left India & migrated to U.K to become a western artist. I wish, he had not formed ‘the Progressive Group’. I wish, he had remained in India. I wish, he had, also, opened his eyes & creative sensibilities,

instead of taking a reaction stance, towards the creative visual directions evolved by Indian artists from their soil, like Nand Lal Bose, Rabindra Nath Tagore & Binod Bihari Mukerjee & the like, who had, in their journey of evolving their creative visual imagery, experienced the British Rule in India, observed & amalgamated, the Asian nuances of creativity & the fragrance of independent India. Had it happened, Indian Contemporary art of today had been abreast, with its own independent personality, any contemporary world art. The best supporting example for this point of view is that of Tyeb Mehta. Most of his life Tyeb Mehta’s creative visual imagery was western oriented. By chance, few years ago, he was invited to Shantineketan to stay & work there. The result was a series of his paintings, ‘Mahisasura’. He will always be remembered for this series of his paintings.
At a given point of time, most of the artists work following the established creative visual directions. Some artists have a compulsion to explore and establish new creative visual directions.

Near about the period of introspection, some women artists, some self-taught artists and some prodigals, entered the Indian contemporary art scene, each expressing his/her creative compulsions and concerns in his/her own creative visual imagery. Indian Contemporary art, with all its faults, became Indian contemporary art, thereafter. A confident and more self- reliant, second generation of artists after independence are now taking over the contemporary Indian art scenario. But sometime, one gets scared when a second generation artist is always in search of an indigenous visual experience with whose first time exposure, he wants, to attract only western art connoisseur.
In my analysis above, about the emerging Indian Contemporary Art scenario, I have not taken into consideration, that abstract art achieved with the help of evolved establisted technique of the artist which fills the needs of hotel decoration & home decoration requirements.