From Dinner Parties to Galleries: the Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle in Bombay – 1940S Through the 1950S Chapter Author(S): Margit Franz
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Leuven University Press Chapter Title: From Dinner Parties to Galleries: The Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle in Bombay – 1940s through the 1950s Chapter Author(s): Margit Franz Book Title: Arrival Cities Book Subtitle: Migrating Artists and New Metropolitan Topographies in the 20th Century Book Editor(s): Burcu Dogramaci, Mareike Hetschold, Laura Karp Lugo, Rachel Lee, Helene Roth Published by: Leuven University Press. (2020) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv16qk3nf.6 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Funding is provided by European Research Council (ERC); KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access. Leuven University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arrival Cities This content downloaded from 77.220.112.119 on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:41:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms From Dinner Parties to Galleries The Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle in Bombay – 1940s through the 1950s Margit Franz Walter and Käthe Langhammer, Rudolf and Albrecht von Leyden and Emanuel Schlesinger were essential in promoting an avant-garde art movement in Bombay: the Progressive Artists’ Group. Together with Indian visionaries, these Austrian and German refugees from National Socialism initiated new ways of evaluating, generating and looking at fine art. Besides creating a new audience through the media and sustainability through collecting and other forms of financial help, they consolidated the movement by generating exhibition spaces – from private venues to public galleries. In the following I analyse their contributions to Bombay’s art world, arguing that they were catalysts in the development of post-colonial Indian art.1 Modern Metropolis Bombay: Merging Europe and Asia In Bombay colonial modernity met with industrial capitalism: India’s first industrial manufacturing boom, cotton production, transformed the important harbour and trade hub on the Arabian Sea into one of the foremost industrial and commercial cities of the British Empire. There was a powerful middle class of skilled workers and a cohort of working-class people growing with a constant influx of migrants from all parts of India. The innovations in transportation (steamships) and communication (telegraph), the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and the consequent rise in shipping accelerated global trade and exchange. Bombay’s role as international warehouse opened the way to its “powerful, semi-autonomous place within the imperial hierarchy” (Hunt 2015, 12) with international funds pouring in for infrastructure and investments. Bombay was the only city in India where its commercial elite “had significant stakes in its industry, finance and banking” (Prakash 2003). Local entrepreneurship, in From Dinner Parties to Galleries: The Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle in Bombay 73 This content downloaded from 77.220.112.119 on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:41:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms several cases combined with philanthropy,2 joined hands with science, innovation and technology to build a spearhead for modern India. In the interwar period, accelerating international trade, travel and tourism forced advancements in the metropolis. A continuing stream of international experts in industry and commerce as well as visitors to Bombay and the increasing travel opportunities to Europe for an Indian elite changed the social and cultural ambience in Bombay. This was “represented in new hotels and theatres and brought a touch of glamour and new forms of entertainment to the city” (Dwivedi/Mehrotra 2001, 246). Bombay was modern in attitude, and was open to international inputs, exchanges and negotiations. As Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra put it: The upper class and the business community of entrepreneurs and managers happily imbibed contemporary trends in western culture to create a bon vivant lifestyle, that symbolized gaiety and colour and encompassed western cuisine, dress, ballroom dancing, jazz, cabarets, horse-racing and the cinema. (Dwivedi/ Mehrotra 2001, 246) Modern music like jazz and swing also “echoed the optimism of a new era” (Fernandes 2012, 15) with Indian political independence in sight. Western music and arts were adjusted, rearranged, interpreted and transformed by Indian artists to create a new spirit. The growing film industry in Bombay also generated employment, opportunities and dreams. After the decline of Calcutta, Bombay had become the cultural capital of British India in the early 20th century. The city offered entertainment and income-generation opportunities for artists, education facilities to improve industrial and crafts production, innovative start- ups and entrepreneurs producing and selling modern consumer goods. Migrants from all of India flocked in, as well as Western people, marketing modern goods and technology, trading or being employed in this modern and hybrid metropolis. For these reasons Bombay became the “gamut of dualities” (Dwivedi/Mehrotra 2001, 338): crammed workers’ settlements contrasting with airy modern Art Deco buildings; Manhattan-like business areas like Nariman Point differing from backyard factories, industrial textile mills and an international port; an educated elite diverging from illiterate migrant workers. National agitators as well as local peer-groups were campaigning for decolonisation and independence, labour rights and better living conditions. Socialist and communist movements were strong; progressive writers’ and theatre groups were discussing the shape of a new nation to come. 74 Margit Franz This content downloaded from 77.220.112.119 on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:41:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle: Promoters of modern art in wartime and early post- colonial Bombay Walter Langhammer as an art teacher, Rudi von Leyden as an art critic and Emanuel Schlesinger as an art collector, along with Käthe Langhammer as an informal art critic, were important supporters of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG).3 Together with an informal circle of Indian art connoisseurs, including the manufacturer of picture frames and later gallery owner Kekoo Gandhy, the scientist and art patron Homi Bhabha, the writer Mulk Raj Anand, they supported the young avant-garde artists against the British-dominated artistic mainstream. Other collaborating supporters were: Hermann Goetz, German-born exile responsible for the arts of the Principality of Baroda, and Albrecht von Leyden, as a German emigrant manager for photographic supplies in India. He was a commercial networker, but also an art collector, photographer and amateur painter. Albrecht Robert (known as Lolly) and Rudolf Reinhold (known as Rudi or Rudy) von Leyden were born into an art-loving, bourgeois German family in Berlin. The German Agfa Company sent Albrecht as its representative to India in 1927. His brother Rudi, a doctor of geology, had to leave Germany due to his communist sentiments after the takeover by the National Socialists in early 1933. Rudi joined his brother in Bombay.4 When his initial efforts to follow his geological ambitions failed, he started pursuing his artistic inclinations. His efforts met with success. In 1934 Rudi founded the The Hand. Commercial Art Studio Rudolf von Leyden, and remained employed in Indian enterprises for 40 years, becoming an established publicity manager and advertising expert. In 1937 he became the manager of the advertising department of the Times of India, the biggest English newspaper company in India. In 1952 he joined Volkart Brothers, Switzerland’s leading retailer of colonial goods in India, as publicity manager and in 1957 became a general manager of Voltas, a collaboration between Volkart Brothers and Tata Sons specialising in cooling technology. He was central in the Bombay art scene from the late 1930s until the 1950s as an art critic for the Times of India. “Rudy Von Leyden was perhaps the first ever art critic in Mumbai who was able to influence opinion in favour of modern art with his regular writings in Mumbai newspapers and journals” (Parimoo 1998, 63). On an ad hoc basis he focused on modern and contemporary Indian art, trying to support the avant-garde movement of the PAG, but also wrote about ancient Indian sculptures. In the late 1970s he reflected on his work and admitted, “When I wrote my reviews it was with a definite bias for the new talents, trying to give them From Dinner Parties to Galleries: The Langhammer-Leyden-Schlesinger Circle in Bombay 75 This content downloaded from 77.220.112.119 on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 20:41:03 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms the benefit of constructive criticism while I just reported on other exhibitions” (Rudi von Leyden, quoted in Dalmia 2001, 62). For Yashodhara Dalmia Leyden pushed Indian art criticism in a “modernist direction”, setting scholarly standards and “parameters