My Concept of Art

My Concept of Art is a quasi-autobiographical essay by one of India’s best-known twentieth-century artists, Somnath Hore, which leads the reader through the various vicissitudes of the artist’s life: from his early adventures in drawing to his involvement in India’s struggle for freedom from British rule through the Communist Party of India to his formal induction into the world of art. It outlines the various changes in his artistic thinking in terms of his life both as an artist and a human being with passionate convictions of how the world ought to be. It places his life in the context of the social and the political world around him and it explains the concepts that provided the background to his lifelong experiments in art. A powerful insight into one man’s notions regarding art and politics and the interrelationship between them--both intrinsically Indian and universal.