50 Years of Independence 1947-97, 1997

Altaf

Altaf Mohamedi (1942-2005) was born in Baroda (now, Vadodara) and belonged to a socially privileged background. His sister was the now well-known abstractionist Nasreen Mohamedi, even though Altaf’s own work tended to frequently embrace figuration and narrative, sometimes in order to express his political ideas. As a committed Marxist he absorbed from the diverse vocabularies of global left-wing activism, especially during his stay in London in the 1960s when he was attending Central Saint Martins and going to rallies against racism and imperialism. After moving back to Mumbai he continued to find ways to integrate the principles of his ideological education with those of his creative art-making, especially by doing public murals, collages and posters (while participating in activist movements) that also explored an existential relationship with the historical world of post-independent India.