Must Art Gallery

MUST ART GALLERY, Neatly tucked away in the art district of Delhi, Must Art Gallery is a remarkable phenomenon in itself. As an art gallery dedicated solely to the art of the Gond people of central India, it has carved out a niche in something that had formerly been the preserve of museums.
The gallery promotes traditional art practices and has an extensive collection of Gond Art—an art form that is much acclaimed and exhibited across the world for its vibrant and compelling patterns but also its spectacular imagery. Infused with a rich cultural intensity, Gond images are products of a fertile imagination, at one with nature, and are, in fact, works of modern contemporary art rather than some antiquated tradition. These fantastic pictorial narratives, however, continue the ancient form of story-telling, albeit in a new form, as animated imagery, which is essentially modern in style but resonant with a culturally-distinct ethos.

What makes the idea of the gallery so potent in its commitment to these captivating conceptions is not only the unique visual language of these images, but the fact that they preserve and perpetuate an entire way of life, enshrining the wit and wisdom of generations, as also the cultural and aesthetic traditions of a people.

In its wide-ranging collection, the gallery features works of internationally-renowned artists like Jangarh Singh Shyam, Bhajju Shyam, Durga Bai, Ram Singh Urveti, Bhuri Bai, and Dilip Shyam, amongst others, but also new and emerging artists like Nankusiya Shyam and Manoj Tekam. These artists draw from a vast repertoire of oral narratives, working with acrylic on canvas and pen-and-ink on paper, and transform an oral tradition into a modern art form, with a unique visual vocabulary—richly expressive in its imagery and rooted in the local tradition.

As an organization committed to promote this unique form of expression that simultaneously straddles tradition and modernity, Must Art gallery has strived to provide a sustainable platform to these artists, encouraging them to transcend cultural barriers and present an alternative way of perceiving the world. Through its panoptic vision to promote and encourage Gond art artists, the gallery seeks to cater to a range of interests, from the connoisseurial eye of the academic and the collector, to the undiscerning, though intuitive, eye of the enthusiast. Indeed, its raison d’etre is to promote a social and cultural awareness of the aesthetic traditions of a people, who, threatened by socio-economic change, might, as the renowned anthropologist, Verrier Elwin, wrote, “be led to reject the old life and [...] in its place [be given] little idea of how to have rhythm and vitality, exuberance and delight.

The gallery has, in a way, endeavoured to protect the artists from the demands of the lucrative art market, which not only renders their style rigid, leaving little space for experimentation and innovation, but also transforms the natural lifestyle that in the very first place inspired these images. Indeed, through its enterprising zeal, Must Arts has provided the artists a stable and sustainable niche for their works, enabling them to continue creating and conceiving the world through their surreal dream-like imagination, independent of economic pressures.