An Architectural and Design Show by Raffael Dedo Gadebusch
The Kiran Nadar Museum of Art presents ‘Eckart Muthesius and Manik Bagh—Pioneering Modernism in India’, curated by Raffael Dedo Gadebusch, the head of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst, Berlin. The exhibition, which started on 15 October 2024, will be on display until 8 December 2024.
Courtesy – Shubha & Prahlad Bubbar Collection.
The exhibition is a collaborative effort between ‘Museum für Asiatische Kunst Berlin’ (Asian Art Museum Berlin), an institution of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK); international partners, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) and the German Embassy New Delhi. This exhibition is the beginning of a long-term partnership between the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art in New Delhi and the Asian Art Museum in Berlin, with both institutions contributing to the field of modern and contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on India and its neighbouring nations.
Courtesy – Taimur Hassan Collection
The exhibition, honouring architect Eckart Muthesius on his 120th birthday, relates the intriguing tale of a productive conversation about design and architecture that took place in the early 1930s between Germany and India.
Courtesy – Shubha & Prahlad Bubbar Collection
The main characters in this narrative are Berlin’s architect Eckart Muthesius (1904-1989) and Indore‘s Maharaja Yeshwant Rao Holkar II (1908-1961), who had first met in Oxford at the end of the 1920s. The Maharaja appointed Muthesius shortly afterwards to create a mansion for him and his spouse. This was to be distinctly different from the English colonial-style designs that were already in place.
Translated as the ‘jewel garden,’ Manik Bagh was India’s first iconic modernist edifice, having been commissioned by Yeshwant Rao Holkar and completed by Muthesius in 1933. The palace personified the new democratic architecture’s holistic principles. Eckart Muthesius designed the palace interiors with puristically elegant and highly innovative, masterpieces of contemporary design and significant artwork, including the three versions of the sculpture ‘Bird in Space’ that the Maharaja commissioned from Constantin Brancusi.
Courtesy – Shubha & Prahlad Bubbar Collection.
Manik Bagh is a symbol of the early days of international modernism and an architectural synthesis, unlike any other building in Asia. A selection of rare old photographs by Man Ray, Emil Leitner, and Eckart Muthesius will be on display in the exhibition along with watercolours, sketches, and design studies by Muthesius, which will unfold the curatorial objective.
About Kiran Nadar Museum of Art
Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) opened its doors to the public in January 2010. It is a pioneering private museum of Modern and Contemporary art in South Asia, with two spaces located in New Delhi and Noida. It is a not-for-profit institution with an extensive and creative engagement with exhibition-making, educational and public-focused programs, and publications. The museum houses a growing collection of more than 10,000 artworks from South Asia, with a focus on the historical trajectories of 20th-century Indian art, alongside the experimental practices of young contemporaries.
Image: Eckart Muthesius, The Maharaja’s Living Room with “Bird in Space” by Constantin Brâncuși. 1933; Vintage gelatin silver print. 22.5 x 29 cm. Courtesy – Shubha & Prahlad Bubbar Collection
