Artrends (A Contemporary Art Bulletin)

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For many years, publications that comprehensively bring to viewers the many modes of visual perfection as seen in contemporary art, have been in great demand. Thus the decision of the quarterly journal ARTRENDS, so painstakingly produced and publicized by the Progressive Painters' Association, Madras, to bring out a bound edition containing the first seventeen issues, comprising six volumes of this quarterly, from October 1961 to April 1967, is a befitting answer to this lacunae.

As a keen reader of the issues, over these years, I am led to believe that ARTRENDS has carried articles and information penned on the stalwarts of the Indian art scene. Then as we move towards newer paradigms of art practices, these crucial references from our past, penned by scholars and artists contributors contained in this volume, are not just nostalgic linkages but valuable inputs into the giant strides that national art has taken in India. Besides the Indian input, this valuable publication has not left the international scene untouched as it carries articles on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Indian Triennale events which the Lalit Kala Akademi has hosted successfully. In touch with the foreign art scene are essays on international Biennale events at Venice and Sao Paulo. In all, this unique convergence of artistic milestones encompasses encom the crux of modern Indian art in relation to art the world over.

A publication of this resilience and breadth of content will render yeoman service towards disseminating Indian art to a larger and resurgent art reading audience.

The ARTRENDS, an organ of the Progressive Painters' Association, Madras, (regd.1944) was a quarterly bulletin on contemporary art, mainly Indian.

This bound edition includes the first seventeen issues comprising six volumes or twenty three quarterly numbers covering the period between October 1961 and April 1967. After a brief discontinuity, eleven issues were brought out covering the period between July 1971 and April 1982.

ARTRENDS was a creation of a group of visionary artists of Madras and the art theoretician and chronicler of the Madras Movement in contemporary Indian art, the late Prof. Josef James. We are grateful to them for this effort which covers One Hundred and Ninety-Three Indian painters and sculptors who have been active during that period. 642 photogravure reproductions of modern painting and sculpture by Indian and foreign artists illustrate the edition.

We are extremely thankful to the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi for having come forward to print a thousand copies of this bound edition which will be of immense value especially to students and teachers of contemporary art, collectors and art enthusiasts.