Tracing the development of Bengal art during the 20th century, the ongoing exhibition, Bengal Painting — Search for National Identity: Pre-modern & Modern, endeavours to show a selection of paintings where the search for a national identity has played a dominant role. It begins with a few examples of pre-modern early Bengal paintings by unknown artists, who came to Calcutta from a rural environment and learnt the techniques of oil painting from British artists or their disciples. Using an urban and alien technique with the sensibilities of a traditional artist, they developed a naivety of execution that lent a flavour of innocence to their works. It then goes on to show how art in Bengal has evolved from pre-modern executions like Company School, oil paintings of unknown artists, Kalighat paintings, etc. to the early modern, like the British academic naturalistic style of paintings, the modernity of neo-Indian school, modernism of Rabindranath and the works of the artists of the 1940s and their successors, and, finally, to the post-modern executions of the 1990s and contemporary trends of the 21st century. Featuring works by Nandalal Bose, Jamini Roy, Ramkinkar Baij, Gobardhan Ash, Indra Dugar, Satyajit Ray, Meera Mukherjee (a drawing by her appears here), K.G. Subramanyan, B.R.Panesar, Sanat Kar, Ramananda Bandyopadhyay, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, Dharmanarayan Dasgupta and others. Hosted by Rangotsav Art Gallery.