Mohan Samant

Mohan Samant (born Manmohan Balkrishna Samant in Mumbai [then Bombay] in 1924 - New York City, 2004) was an early Indian modernist painter and member of the Progressive Artists Group. He was also a lifelong player of the sarangi, an Indian bowed string instrument.

Samant was born Manmohan Balkrishna Samant into a middle-class Brahmin family in Goregaon, a suburb of Mumbai (then Bombay), India, in 1924. The fourth child of eight, he grew up in a cultured environment. Samant’s father, Balkrishna Ramchandra Samant, was a headmaster and his mother a homemaker. His younger sister, Vasudha Patil, an accomplished novelist, has written that their parents encouraged the family’s interest in music, art, theater, movies, travel, and writing, and Samant displayed an early proficiency in and dedication to both music and the visual arts.

Samant received his diploma from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1952, where he studied under S.B. (Shankar Balwant) Palsikar. In 1954 he was awarded the Governor’s Prize and the silver medal for water colors at the Bombay Art Society Annual Exhibition.

In 1952, Samant joined the Progressive Artists' Group and exhibited with them in several shows, including the 1953 exhibition, Progressive Artists’ Group: Gaitonde, Raiba, Ara, Hazarnis, Khanna, Husain, Samant, Gade, at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. He also participated in the Bombay Group, a successor to the Bombay PAG. According to artist Baburao Sadwelkar, the Bombay Group, which included Samant as well as Hebbar, Ara, Chavda, Kulkarni, Laxman Pai, Har Krishnan Lall, and Sadwelkar, had “six big exhibitions [between 1957 and 1964], which were received extremely well.” Samant did not mention the Bombay Group in interviews or recorded conversations, but a review from The Times of India confirms that he had works in their November 1956 exhibition.

In 1956, Samant was awarded the Gold Medal at the Bombay Art Society’s group exhibition, another at the Calcutta Art Society show, and the Lalit Kala Akademi All India Award. That same year, he took part in the seminal exhibition, Eight Painters: Bendre, Gaitonde, Gujral, Husain, Khanna, Kulkarni, Kumar, Samant, curated by Thomas Keehn, and in the Venice Biennale. Samant spent 1957-58 in Rome on a scholarship awarded by the Italian government. In February 1959, a Rockefeller Fellowship took him to New York City, where he would remain until 1964.

Exhibitions during Samant’s first New York period included what is considered the first showing of the Progressive Artists' Group in America, Trends in Contemporary Painting from India: Gaitonde, Husain, Khanna, Kumar, Padamsee, Raza, Samant, Souza, curated by Thomas Keehn and held at the Graham Gallery, New York, as well as A Collection of Contemporary Art, Art in Embassies Committee, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1961), Recent Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art, New York (1963), and Dunn International: 102 Best Painters of the World, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and the Tate Gallery, London (1963).

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