Forgotten Fold: Academic Realism, Lost Voices, and the Art Historiography of BengalPublished by Aakriti Art Gallery, 2025

Forgotten Fold marks a critical intervention in the historiography of Bengal’s academic realist tradition, offering a singular focus on Ananda Mohan Shaha—an artist largely omitted from mainstream narratives, yet pivotal to understanding the visual culture of early 20th-century Bengal. This richly documented volume revisits a neglected chapter in Indian art history by reconstructing the life, work, and context of Shaha through rare archival images, journal facsimiles, and freshly restored reproductions of his only known masterpiece, Ashru-Kumva (1918).

Structured around one work by one artist, Forgotten Fold nonetheless extends its critical scope by situating Shaha alongside his better-known contemporaries—such as Hemendranath Mazumdar, Atul Bose, and B.C. Law—thereby inviting a broader reassessment of Bengal’s academic realist lineage. The book is both a monograph and a collective curatorial gesture, drawing on newly surfaced evidence, institutional exhibition records, and contemporary commentary from early 20th-century art publications.

With over one hundred images—many previously unpublished—this volume not only documents visual material but also provides rich scholarly interpretation. Essays by Uma Nair, Soujit Das, Mrinal Ghosh, Dr. Anuradha Ghosh, Debdutta Gupta, and Vikram Bachhawat offer layered perspectives: from critical theory and archival restoration to personal curatorial reflections and historiographic insights. The inclusion of primary sources—such as the 1920 Puja issue of The Indian Academy of Art, which first described Ashru-Kumva—further anchors the volume in the period’s own aesthetic discourse.

Through this rigorous reassembly of visual and textual fragments, Forgotten Fold succeeds in doing what its title promises: recovering a “fold” of Bengal’s visual culture that had slipped through the seams of institutional memory. It sets a benchmark for future archival and revisionist studies in South Asian art, underscoring the necessity of monographic research in unearthing complex, often marginalised, artistic legacies.

A limited edition of 500 copies, this publication will be of particular value to scholars of colonial art history, curators, archivists, and collectors invested in the re-mapping of India’s visual modernity.

Aakriti Art Gallery (AAG)
Art gallery in Kolkata, West Bengal
Address: Orbit Enclave, 12/3a, Picasso Bithi, Mullick Bazar, Park Street area, Kolkata, West Bengal 700017