Now open at London’s Royal Academy of Arts, A Story of South Asian Art: Mrinalini Mukherjee and Her Circle is a group exhibition telling the story of Indian artist Mrinalini Mukherjee (1949–2015) through the people and places that informed her practice.
Born in post-partition Bombay (renamed Mumbai in 1995) and raised in Santiniketan, Mrinalini Mukherjee worked intensively with fibre, and later bronze and ceramic, for most of her four-decade career, creating an extensive body of work that fused abstraction and figuration with influences from nature, ancient Indian sculpture, modern design, and local craft and textile traditions.
For the first time, this exhibition brings together a body of Mukherjee’s work with work by some of her key mentors, friends and family, including:
Leela Mukherjee (1916–2002), Mrinalini’s mother, who is considered to be one of India’s first modernist female sculptors. This is the first time that her sculptures, watercolours and etchings have been shown institutionally outside of India;
Benode Behari Mukherjee (1904–1980), Mrinalini’s father, who was a pioneer of the Contextual Modernism movement in India, and this exhibition includes a group of collages made after he lost his eyesight in his early 50s;
Jagdish Swaminathan (1928–1994), a close friend and mentor Mrinalini Mukherjee encountered in New Delhi, and who influenced her through his exploration of indigenous iconography and socio-political critique in painting and print;
Prints, ceramics and paintings by Gulammohammed Sheikh (b. 1937), also a close friend of Mukherjee and a student of Subramanyan, that blend an engagement with political and cultural tensions in India with interests in classical art and storytelling.
Featuring sculpture, painting, drawing, textiles, ceramics and printmaking, the exhibition explores how these close relationships, shared learning, and support for one another shaped not just individual careers, but formed a vibrant creative and intellectual network that influenced the trajectory of modern and contemporary art in South Asia.
The exhibition concludes with recent works by Nilima Sheikh (b. 1945) and Gulammohammed Sheikh from 2024, showcasing the continued vitality of these relationships and their lasting influence.
For further information: royalacacademy.org.uk
Image: Jagdish Swaminathan, Untitled (Lily by my Window), circa early 1970s. Oil on canvas, 106.7 x 121.9 cm. Private collection, Switzerland. Photograph Courtesy of Sotheby’s, Inc. © 2025. © J. Swaminathan Foundation
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