Published in Mint Lounge | 02 June, 2018

In Upon Your Bones This Temple, a video game created by Mumbai-born, Delhi-based multidisciplinary artist Sahej Rahal, the player is dropped inside a forbidding, disorienting virtual structure without any instructions or backstory. Painted almost entirely in varying shades of red-from its geometric walls and pathways, to the almost sandstone-like desert floor far below-this virtual space is infused with a sinister, otherworldly ambiance. This is further amplified by the game’s ominous background score, a soundtrack that hints at arcane rituals and extraterrestrial origins. I later find out that Rahal has intercut heavily manipulated samples of devotional music and the Gayatri Mantra into the music.

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Published Online | 14 May, 2018

For Akademie Schloss Solitude and ZKM‘s web residencies Indian artist Sahej Rahal created a video game populated by 3D scanned objects. These artifacts are either 3D scanned sculptures created by the artist using found objects like orntate furniture and broken plaster idols, polyurethane and cement, or objects scanned at the museum Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, formerly known as Prince of Wales Museum. These objects were animated inside a virtual world to perform a countermythology. To enable a larger narrative, this virtual world distributes the narrative constructed by the artist’s work in the real world and social media. This process of mythmaking mimics the process of refabricating history, instrumentalized by reactionary politics. By adopting especially the online strategies of the Indian People’s Party (BJP) as a reactionary act, Dissonant Mythologies continues a trajectory of inquiry into the mechanics of juxtaposing the virtual and the real, fake and true.Download the game and read an interview with the artist here

Published in Sunday Mid Day | Feb 04, 2018

Baa’s House (2015) features Patel as Spiderman, with grandmother Laxmiben

” We latch on to our heroes for different reasons. I have always been a big fan of Bruce Lee. For me, Bruce Lee is a skinny Asian hero and, as a kid, I hated being skinny – it wasn’t cool at all. I grew up in a white neighbourhood, and then there is this hero who is not white and is kicking everyone’s a**. Everyone wants to be him, even the white kids,” says Hetain Patel.

We have been watching Patel’s film, Don’t Look at the Finger (2017), at gallery Chatterjee and Lal in Colaba. With a couple of hours to go for the opening, when the space will be packed to the rafters with visitors at the ongoing Mumbai Gallery Weekend, we are at a relative advantage. The cinematic scores that accompany this film, and The Jump, another work by Patel, fill the gallery in a dramatic Hollywood moment. The title, Don’t Look at the Finger, will be one that Bruce Lee afficionados will be able to pick on quickly. After all, it was the great actor, the trailblazer for a whole generation that took to martial arts as a form of hobby, who commanded: Don’t think. Feel.

That may well be the case as you watch the film. A single channel work that is 16-minutes-long, Don’t Look at the Finger features an all-black cast dressed in what seems like traditional West African attire. A bride walks into a hall, most likely a church, where her groom waits. The cult scene, one that we have repeatedly consumed from Hollywood, is familiar, but is quickly upturned when the minister uses sign language to communicate with the to-be couple.

And it’s not just her; the families and the couple also communicate with each other through gestures. So, you think, perhaps feeling a little self-congratulatory, this should be interesting – an entire wedding ceremony that takes place in sign language. Just as you prepare yourself, the groom and the bride start combating each other, the way Bruce Lee did, and the way The Matrix series did it again. An arm outstretched, the bride challenges the groom with the iconic hand gesture: Bring it on. The marital has just met the martial – like it does in life, at times.

No, you cannot get comfortable when it’s a film by Patel. He just won’t let you. He describes Don’t Look at the Finger, commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella with Manchester Art Gallery and QUAD, as “an African Kung Fu film”. “I wanted to see how to bring all these elements that are usually considered exotic – a West African family, sign language, and East Asian martial arts – and lace them with a mode we all recognise – Hollywood. This means epic music, cinematography and choreography. I wanted to create a world where supposedly disparate elements make sense together,” he says.

For that matter, the church, an actual space in London, became a nightclub in its next avatar, and will soon become a performance space. The printed tunics and dresses that the actors don, which we will easily identify with an African tribe, are actually Dutch wax prints. Yet, these diverse elements are seamlessly married together in the film. ”

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Running a gallery surrounded by art and working with artists you admire is a great job. No question. At the outset, there is the thrill of co-piloting an artist’s career during take off. Then, over the years, you have the privilege of watching as each artist’s practice evolves and deepens. Why, then, is opening a gallery in Mumbai seemingly such an unappetising prospect?

India was home to a vibrant modern art scene as early as the 1940s, possessing a large complement of artists and collectors who were aware of international art movements. It is therefore ironic that there were actually no commercial galleries with artist rosters until the early 1960s, when Chemould and Pundoles were finally established. Indeed, even then, the pioneering promoters behind these ventures were, in actual fact, accidental gallerists. This reluctance to open galleries extended over the next forty years which saw no more than a slow trickle of galleries open until, in the early to mid-2000s, there was a sudden surge of new entities. For five or so short years, everyone wanted to be a gallerist. 2009 saw a massive correction to the contemporary art market, and that put paid to any new galleries coming onto the scene.

Fast-forward to 2018 and young would-be gallerists, instead of opening spaces, seem to be veering toward one of the many new non-commercial visual arts organisations in the country (many of which featured in last year’s South Asian Art Market Report).

The question is why.

Entry costs to the gallery community are very high: you either need to own a space or have the ability to keep up with the crippling rental prices; you need to be prepared to travel to where your artists are exhibiting, and, if need be, participate in art fairs which, often, might be very expensive branding exercises with precious few sales to show for your trouble; and you need to have the resources to ride out the monsoon period when no artist wants to show and no collector would be seen dead in the city.

The city’s gallery culture has always been perceived to be clique-ish but this is sure to be felt more acutely if you are a young person living in an India that, increasingly, looks to arts and culture to break down long-held hierarchical systems.  At present, the level of engagement of galleries with communities beyond their collector base is almost non-existent. The Mumbai Gallery Weekend presents only one honourable attempt to rectify the situation, but, still, it is once a year and last for all of four days or so.

Technology is developing faster that galleries are evolving. If you’re young and interested in art, it is unlikely that you are looking to instagram accounts of Mumbai galleries to get your daily art hit. India’s superstar interior designers and architects are the undisputed tastemakers as far as the visual arts are concerned. One post of an artist’s work by any one of these influencers will do more for demand than any number sent into the ether by that artist’s gallery. The gallery scene needs to be far more visible online, in particular on a visual-led medium such as instagram.

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Going forward Mumbai galleries need to think hyper-local. With the help of digital platforms, the gallery can have global reach and, arguably, greater global credibility by concentrating first and foremost on developing world class programs for their local audiences. There will soon be an inflection point where the measure of success is not how well an artist has done at an art fair outside India, but how much she is being discussed on social media by Indian influencers. You can’t get this kind of visibility unless you are extremely active on the ground, constantly curating events that complement the work of artists that are being shown at the gallery. And these activities need to be aimed at wide and diverse local audiences.

The Mumbai gallery community will also need to address the question that is facing so many others globally: is a gallery still a gallery without a space? Does it make sense to organise popup exhibitions as an alternative to operating from a bricks and mortar space. I think it is too early still in the Indian context. We have barely created a regular gallery going community and it will simply wither if there are any fewer settled gallery spaces than exist right now. But galleries soon won’t need to be wedded to the South Mumbai area of Colaba in the slavish manner that has held the last fifty years. There is a big city out there to explore.

Published online |  June 8, 2017

“The audience at Documenta 14 will be invited to be witness to the transformations that the performance, the intuitive act of drawing, and the intensity of the patterns in persona that will unravel as the experience of aural and visual streams blend into one’s consciousness.
At his show in London last year Nikhil gave an insight into his working: “I think drawing or making maps or taking photographs or making images of something … [is] … an act of claiming ownership over it. My take on it is to reclaim a certain kind of history, to return, in fact, [to] this orientalist discussion about the Western traveller coming to the East and making documents and taking them back home. I want to be the oriental, perhaps, that comes to the West and makes drawings… And makes chronicles and perhaps goes back home to India with… documentation of that.”
This is an apt epitaph in the land of Greeks and stoic legions of literature and the arts”.

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Published online: June 24, 2017

“Indian highlights
The Indian presence was fairly strong in Athens and Kassel, thanks, presumably, to one of the exhibition’s advisors, Natasha Ginwalla, who is the first Indian to have made it to the top echelon of international curators. Delhi artist Amar Kanwar was accorded the singular honour of being invited to documenta for the fourth consecutive exhibition.

My favourite Indian piece in Kassel was the performance artist Nikhil Chopra’s Drawing a Line Through Landscape. Chopra is known for performances that last hours or even days. For documenta, he stretched that timeline further, travelling from Athens to Kassel by road, sleeping in a tent and painting onto its canvas sides representations of the landscapes he traversed. That tent, along with a video capturing moments from his East European sojourn, and the paintings he made, now stitched together in one long panorama,were presented in an abandoned underground station in Kassel, where he ended his 28-day performance.

Not only is Chopra an unflagging performer of rare stamina and concentration, he is also an excellent draughtsman, capable of producing vigorous drawings and carefully-wrought likenesses in difficult circumstances. What do I mean by difficult? Try painting on the cloth of a tent on a windy day, or even on a still day. His performances require heaps of skill, and their meaning grows out of it. I’m heartily sick of discovering the point of a work solely through reading about the its historical context in the wall text, or through a sappy biographical back-story, and there was far too much of that in documenta 14.”

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By Mortimer Chatterjee                                                                                                         Published in Mumbai Mirror | 04 January 2016

When Terminal 2 of the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, operated by GVK, was opened in early 2014, the art collection was presented as one of its most compelling features. Now more than a year later, it is interesting to revisit the terminal to assess the success of the ambitious art programme.

The initial impetus to acquire art came from Sanjay Reddy, Managing Director of Mumbai International Airport Pvt. Ltd. and his wife, Aparna (Pinky), who understood that art could be a powerful way of introducing aspects of a complex culture such as India’s. They were also aware of the fragile state of many of the traditional crafts in the country. Committed collectors themselves, the Reddys reached out to one of India’s greatest art personalities of the last half century, Rajeev Sethi.

“We met Rajeev at a time when the new terminal was yet to be constructed,” recalls Sanjay Reddy. “Art displays are a common feature at many airports around the world. We aimed for more. Our objective was to create something that would be steeped in India’s culture and stand apart from all other airports. We wanted Rajeev to conceptualise and curate an entire museum within the airport that would reflect the depth and range of Indian art, a museum so captivating that people wouldn’t mind giving their flight a miss.

Moreover the collection would need to be supported by the architectural framework of the terminal. It was a colossal task that called for crystalclear vision and creative genius and Rajeev delivered, like only he can, surpassing our expectations and possibly his own. We, and Indian art, have a lot to thank him for.”

It is difficult to overstate the impact that Sethi has had both nationally and internationally in promoting the arts of South Asia and, in particular, the dying traditions of India’s master craftsmen. His eye for quality is unparalleled and with the kind of spaces available at Terminal 2, coupled with enviable resources, the result was always going to be a significant statement as to the state of the arts in India in the first quarter of the 21st Century.

An acquisitions spree began around 2011 and would, ultimately, result in a collection numbering over 5000. These works were gradually collected together in Mumbai where art conservation consultant Anupam Sah and team were in charge of assessing items for necessary conservation work. The collection is primarily object-based and spans a vast spread of the subcontinent’s art history. The organising principle that Sethi employed was the idea of Thresholds, a potent symbol for an airport situated, as it is, at a threshold between India and the rest of the world.

In the four years that it took the terminal to be fully realised, the art team worked closely with artists and craftsmen to complete artworks that were, in many cases, very complex to produce. Full mock-ups were produced in order to assess the viability of individual pieces. Now that some time has passed since the opening of the terminal, it is heartening to note that the vast bulk of the artworks remain in perfect working order.

The first area to be completed was in the arrivals section of the Terminal and consisted of a number of large format works that run alongside the many travelators. Here contemporary artists such as Vivan Sundaram, Samit Das and Meera Devidayal have conceived of works that talk in general to the idea of India in all its heterogeneity.

In the terminal, Sethi, in the guise of a scenographer, has designed the layout of the art collection in the manner that sets are designed for the theatre. The challenge here is that vast walls, in height and width, are encountered over multiple levels. Accordingly, each of Sethi’s scenes are densely installed with works, at least some of which can be enjoyed from whatever the vantage point of the viewer. The artwork is now all but installed and a new, exciting, phase is about to begin under the stewardship of Yamini Telkar, who has recently been brought on as head of the Jaya He GVK New Museum.

This is a space inside the terminal that has already seen three exhibitions, including ones focusing on the traditional arts of Bengal and one on Gond painting from Madhya Pradesh. Telkar also oversees the art shop that sells a multitude of specially commissioned works by the craftsmen involved in the initial acquisitions period. This ongoing involvement is in the aim of providing sustainable employment for these communities.

“India is home to several old art forms, many of which have been confined to the specific communities or regions of their origin for decades,” Telkar observes. “However the country itself is opening up to international audiences on several fronts, art included, and there is a wonderful opportunity to bring talented artists into global limelight by giving contemporary expression to traditional art forms. It’s a large part of the work we do here. The underlying objective is to share this magnificent collection of art with the people of India and the world beyond this airport.”

Telkar hopes to increase awareness of the airport’s art collection and activities through bringing groups — in particular school children— to see the works. In terms of outreach, she has already organised several talks in south Mumbai around topics, and with speakers, specific to the ongoing exhibitions at the airport gallery. There are also plans afoot to present aspects of the collection in spaces connected with more local forms of transport, perhaps at bus terminals or train stations.

Underpinning all of the art related activity at Terminal 2 over the last four years is the idea of ‘reconnecting’. The team at the airport rightly believes that art has the ability to reconnect audiences with the best of a culture. They hope that this idea will appeal to Indian nationals and non-Indians alike. It is undoubtedly the case that they have been successful in the first phase of the life of the art collection. The key now is for the Jaya He GVK airport collection to reconnect with the audience that resides in the city it calls home.

By Mortimer Chatterjee                             Published in Mumbai Mirror | 28 December 2015

Citi is an American multinational banking and financial services corporation. It has a long and venerable relationship with India, beginning operations in the subcontinent in 1902, and today it operates in 28 cities nationally. The art collection has been built up over the last 40 years or so. It is painting-specific and is marked by an eclecticism that is as much a function of the Indian art scene, as it is of the successive generations of Citi senior management who have been involved in acquiring art for the company.

Pramit Jhaveri, the CEO of Citi India since 2010, has worked with the company since 1987. Together with his wife, Mukeeta, he has developed a keen interest in art and has been key to the wide-ranging initiatives related to the collection since 2011.

The earliest paintings owned by Citi were executed in the early 1970s and the most recent are from around the beginning of the millennium. There are representative works by the majority of prominent artists of that era, including Anjolie Ela Menon, Badri Narayan, Manu Parekh and Prabhakar Kolte.

There are also significant works by artists of the modern era who were still very active through into the 1980s, including Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar and M F Husain.

Citi owns four works by V S Gaitonde; one lithograph and three canvases. The print dates from 1958 and is an extremely rare work, both in terms of its subject matter and medium. The canvas paintings are from a later point in the artist’s career, when he had moved to abstract compositions, and each is important in its own right. In totality, the Citi Gaitondes represent a very significant holding of one of India’s greatest painters of the 20th century. Interestingly, it was Jhaveri’s encounter with one of the artist’s works in a colleague’s cabin in the Delhi office, that set in train many of the recent art related activities at the group. It occurred to him that such magnificent works should be recognised as such, rather than be used only in the service of decorating spaces. This project was executed by the Realty Services Team, and supported by Shahin Dastur from Corporate Affairs, which is headed up by Debasis Ghosh.

With the move of Citi’s India HQ to the First International Financial Centre, in BKC, the team initiated a wholesale art programme that sought to understand and itemise the totality of the collection and, once done, bring to Mumbai all significant works.

Shireen Gandhy of Chemould Prescott Road was engaged to undertake this process and, together with Mukeeta, 250 paintings were identified and an extensive conservation programme then swung into gear on this group. Pune-based restorer S Girikumar was tasked with this job and was given a temporary lab in an erstwhile squash court on campus.

The Citi India Art Project grew out of the completion of this first phase of consolidation and conservation. In 2012 around 30 works from the collection were displayed at the Jehangir Art Gallery during its diamond jubilee celebrations, which coincided with the Citi 200-year celebrations.

The display of the artworks over the six floors of Citi’s BKC office has been a labour of love on the part of the Jhaveri couple.

There are a host of curated areas that focus on the various strengths of the collection including boardrooms devoted solely to artists such as Ram Kumar and B Prabha. The trading floor pays homage to works in monochrome, with paintings ranged around a room teaming with monitors and hi tech gadgetry. There is also a corridor devoted to watercolours. A label with basic information accompanies each of the works on display. There is also a comprehensive list of all the works available to view online at Citi’s India website.

One of the results of this concerted action has been to instill pride in employees in regard to the collection. Indeed during the move to new offices, an opportunity was given to actually choose works for cabins.

Additionally, Citi displays and shares some of the works at its annual Citi-NCPA Aadi Anant Festival of Indian Music — in partnership with the NCPA. Works have also been loaned and exhibited nationally.

Other art related initiatives include sponsoring a past edition of Mumbai Gallery Weekend and a recent partnership with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) to conserve 150 art objects in the museum’s collection that span a 4,000 year history.

The seriousness with which Citi treat their art, and the visibility that they are keen to give it, could serve as a template for any number of corporate art collections. It is one thing to have acquired artworks, it is quite another to make it a talking point amongst employees, alumni and the art community at large. This is what marks out the Citi art collection as very special.

By Mortimer Chatterjee                           Published in Mumbai Mirror | 21 December 2015

The RPG art collection is probably the largest privately owned repository of modern and contemporary paintings and sculptures in India. It is the outcome of three decades of collecting on the part of the company’s chairman, Harsh Goenka. Throughout this period artworks have been installed prominently in offices owned and operated by the company.
RPG is a major player in domains like power distribution, information technology, infrastructure, tyres, plantations and pharmaceuticals. Harsh has been chairman since 1988 when he took over from his father, R P Goenka. He also inherited a family passion for art, music and the scholarly world surrounding these disciplines.

Growing up in Kolkata in the early 1970s, Harsh was inducted into art by way of the outstanding miniature collection that the family had built up and which the young boy was given charge of cataloguing. Hasselblad camera at the ready, it would take up to 15 minutes to shoot a single artwork. This exacting work gave him a deep appreciation for art, even if it also left him with a lifelong aversion to miniatures.

His introduction to modern and contemporary art came when Parmeshwar Godrej agreed to undertake the interior design of his new apartment. This was in the late 1980s. He describes her as a woman of ‘impeccable taste’, and it was under her tutelage that he first encountered the few galleries that were active at this time. Beyond Mumbai, his taste for collecting soon saw him get interested in Kolkatabased artists and the school of painting known as neo-Bengal. Traversing half-hidden bylanes by foot, the romance of studio visits soon had Harsh addicted to the process of seeing and acquiring work by this group of artists.

Before long, the desire to mount exhibitions took hold. The first of these was a group show that brought together 75 artists, each producing two works, on the theme of Bombay. Held at the Jehangir Art Gallery, it was on a scale not hitherto seen in the city and attracted huge crowds. The entire exercise was not for profit and kick-started many years of hosting exhibitions, both at the NGMA (National Gallery of Modern Art) and the Jehangir. In tandem with regular exhibitions, Harsh also has been holding art camps in collaboration with his friend, the gallerist Vikram Sethi. His enthusiasm for these events is evident; “Some of my best times have been in the art camps. That is the time that the artists are relaxed. You get to know them and their techniques.” It was during the first of these camps that the collector began to request artists to leave behind a small work that was either a self-portrait or, else, a portrait of another artist. This became an obsession of sorts and up to the present moment, he has assembled over 800 works of this nature.

Asked if he regrets not buying any particular works, he recalls eight important Gaitondes that were once available from the widow of a collector, at one lakh rupees each. The result is that he has no examples by one of India’s greatest abstract painters. These individual gaps are more than made up by supremely good examples of paintings by artists such as S H Raza, Ram Kumar, Jehangir Sabavala and M F Husain. From the generation of mid-career artists adorning the walls in RPG House in Worli are two fabulous Atul Dodiya canvas paintings, one of which, Dr Patel’s Clinic – Lamington Road (1995), is simply one of the most important works to have been executed in the last 30 years. In this painting, Dodiya liberally quotes from Indian art history including vignettes in the style of many luminaries that have informed his own practice (artists such as Anju Dodiya and Sudhir Patwardhan). This a painting about painting, housed amid works by the very artists that Dodiya seeks to acknowledge. There could be no better home for it.

Goenka considers himself to have a collection that is not concerned with art history but, rather, is the result of the “whims and fancies of one person”. While it is true that he does not share the standard institutional desire for completeness, what he does have in common with any great contemporary art collection, is a sense of being a part of a certain moment.

Alfred Barr, the legendary first director of MoMA, New York, once said that a museum of contemporary art should be like a comet, with its head in the present and its tail in the everreceding past. This perfectly describes the nature of Goenka’s acquisitions logic, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. He says he would ultimately like the collection to be housed in more museum-like conditions. This space would be located centrally, as accessibility is something he is keenly aware of. Mumbai would benefit immeasurably from such a project.

By Mortimer Chatterjee                             Published in Mumbai Mirror | 14 December 2015

Deutsche Bank is a leading global investment bank, with more than 78,000 employees in over 70 countries worldwide. Though mainly active in Germany and Europe, the bank has a significant presence in emerging markets such as India. Spread throughout 900 offices globally, the Deutsche Bank art collection is acknowledged as the largest of its kind in the world. Acquisitions have concentrated mainly in the area of works on paper: the total number of individual artworks is now an astonishing 60,000 (by around 5,000 artists).

The collection is overseen in Frankfurt by a team led by Friedhelm Huette. Its senior curator is Alistair Hicks, whose knowledge of Indian contemporary art has been critical in placing work from South Asia into the Germany-based HQ in the recent past.

The story of the bank’s relationship with art in India begins in 1993 at the same time that the Tata Palace (in the Fort area of the city) was purchased and transformed into Deutsche Bank House. A key figure in building the collection was Bernhard Steinruecke, who went on to be General Manager and Joint CEO, India, of Deutsche Bank.

His wife, Ranjana, and motherin-law Usha Mirchandani, are renowned art consultants and gallerists. In concert with the art team in Frankfurt, an ambitious art acquisitions programme evolved. In addition, existing works from the permanent collection were sent over from Germany.

The art collection was distributed to offices around India with each artwork carefully catalogued and barcoded, allowing easy identification. This became a godsend when, in 2013, the bank’s national headquarters were moved to Mumbai and it was decided to concentrate the collection in the new offices at Capital building, located at Bandra Kurla Complex.

With the return of the collection to Mumbai, the management took the wise step of instituting a wide-ranging conservation programme.

Anupam Sah, who has gained acclaim for his work with the CSMVS Museum, was given the lead of the programme. He created a temporary laboratory in an office at the Deutsche Bank HQ. Many of the 250 works in the collection are being treated with a view to restoring the paintings and drawings to their original condition: this process should be complete by the end of 2015.

Spread over two floors, the new hang was overseen by the company’s present India head, Ravneet Gill, himself a keen art lover. His appreciation of the collection is unalloyed: “The Deutsche Bank art collection is a discerning amalgam of Indian and German artworks.

The collection is a wonderful expression of our engagement with society and commitment to promoting culture. These works, spread across our headquarters, bring a unique aesthetic and vibrancy to the work space and enables colleagues not only to enjoy them, but also acquire a deeper appreciation of the vital role art plays in our lives.”

Since the period of local acquisitions is centred around the period of the 1990s, a visitor today is treated to a very specific moment in the history of Indian modern and contemporary art. Highlights include artworks by Bhupen Khakhar, Vivan Sundaram, Rekha Rodwittya, Prabhakar Barwe, Gieve Patel, Atul Dodiya, Nalini Malani and Jitish Kallat.

A work by the well-known painter Sudhir Patwardhan, entitled Chakravyuh, is one of the truly standout works in the collection. The painting is marinated in Mumbai’s chaotic street scenes. The city’s railway system is represented strongly in the multiple narrative threads embedded in the work, and speaks to the fact that trains carry with them the hopes and dreams of Mumbaikars and immigrants alike. The lot of the working class is a crucial concern of the artist, and it is all the more striking to encounter Patwardhan’s slice of gritty social realism in the context of the hallowed walkways of the Deutsche Bank office.

Much of the art on display is hung in corridors and in seating areas. One particularly successful installation includes etchings by George Baselitz, one of Germany most famous living artists. The group has been framed sympathetically with natural wood profiles and is displayed on a curved wall, set back from the building’s glass facade, that allows a vista of a huge swathe of the city. It is hard to imagine a better way to enjoy the work of any artist, let alone an acknowledged heavyweight such as Baselitz.

The Deutsche Bank collection in India is a wonderful example of how a company with a large international footprint can effectively engage with the cultural specifities of the countries in which it operates. This, without losing any of the cultural markers of its place of origin.