Since its inception in 2022, Art Mumbai has become a cultural milestone in Mumbai’s art scene — one that bridges the city’s historic connection to Indian Modern Art and its burgeoning contemporary scene.

This connection feels especially significant in 2025, marking the hundredth anniversary of Krishen Khanna and Tyeb Mehta, two key figures of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG). Founded in post-Partition Bombay in 1947, the Progressive Artists—led by F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza, K.H. Ara, H.A. Gade, with Khanna and Mehta joining later—redefined modern art in a newly independent India. By rejecting colonial academic realism and the Bengal School’s nationalist revivalism, they created a revolutionary visual style that was modern, global, and profoundly human.

Mumbai, the city where they arrived and reinvented themselves, became the centre of that transformation — a place where displacement and desire converged, and where art developed a new language to reflect modern India’s contradictions. The legacy of the Progressives continues to influence Indian art, marked by its openness to blending myth and modernity, politics and poetry, and abstraction and experience.

Art Mumbai 2025 embodies this same spirit of innovation and dialogue. Through retrospectives, installations, and new commissions, this year’s event explores India’s modernist roots while capturing the contemporary vibe — emphasising that the city’s artistic spirit has always been about conversation, resistance, and renewal. Here are six must-see exhibitions this year:

Krishen Khanna, a centenarian modernist and key member of the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, depicted post-partition life and marginalised communities with lively, abstract figurative paintings. His 1960s–70s works include politically infused pieces, evolving abstraction, and personal portrayals of friends’ lives. Led by Dr Zehra Jumabhoy and Kajoli Khanna—a Modern and Contemporary Indian Art specialist and the artist’s granddaughter—this panel discussion will explore Khanna’s diverse work and reassess his art from a contemporary perspective. Discussing his contributions, the panel will address Khanna as an artist, friend, and archivist. The discussion emphasises his contrasting “dark” and “celebratory” phases, influenced by American, British, and Japanese art, offering a fresh view of his ongoing story of humanity and creativity.

The landmark exhibition Krishen Khanna at 100: The Last Progressive, curated by Dr Zehra Jumabhoy and Kajoli Khanna, is on view at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai, from 11 November to 10 December 2025. Learn more here.

Shanthamani Muddaiah’s ‘Bloom’ explores the connection between material memory, cultural heritage, and sculptural abstraction. Produced and owned by StoneX Global, and presented at Art Mumbai 2025 in collaboration with Art Centrix Space, the sculpture—carved from pink Macedonian marble—evokes the pleats of a saree, transforming into the organic form of a blooming mulberry tree — grounded yet reaching upward. Rooted in Karnataka’s silk-weaving tradition and Bengaluru’s botanical identity, ‘Bloom’ invites reflection on transcultural and transhistorical narratives. The pleats subtly reference the ancient Greek ‘chiton’, which was introduced to India during Alexander the Great’s conquest of Asia and later adopted by Mauryan royalty. By using Macedonian marble, Muddaiah underscores this historical intersection, commenting on textile histories, geography, and empire. Bloom shifts from the softness of fabric to the permanence of stone, striking a balance between fragility and strength. The work embodies resilience, resisting erasure through its tactile presence, while holding the weight of cultural intersections and personal histories.

Bloom by Shanthamani Muddaiah is on view from Thursday, 13th November to Sunday, 16th November, at the Sculpture Park, Mahalaxmi Racecourse. Learn more here.

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), Tyeb Mehta Foundation, and Saffronart Foundation will present a major solo exhibition of Tyeb Mehta (1925–2009), titled ‘Tyeb Mehta — Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being)’, to mark the birth centenary of one of India’s most iconic modernists. Opening on 13 November 2025 at Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Mumbai, as part of Art Mumbai, the exhibition features some of Mehta’s celebrated series, along with early drawings and paintings. Over the course of seven decades, Mehta developed a visual language that reflects human duality, pain, and endurance, influenced by social and political upheavals. Drawing from mythology and daily life, his recurring figures—bulls, rickshaw pullers, Mahishasura, Kali, and Falling Figures—inhabit stark spaces, suspended between descent and transcendence. Mehta employed motifs to explore the fragility and resilience of life, transforming the bull into a symbol of both energy and trauma. The exhibition showcases iconic works like Trussed Bull, Mahishasura, Falling Bird, and Falling.

‘Tyeb Mehta — Bearing Weight (with the lightness of being)’, presented by Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA), in partnership with Tyeb Mehta Foundation and Saffronart Foundation, opens on 13 November 2025 at Mahalaxmi Racecourse, Mumbai, during Art Mumbai. Learn more here.

Artistic journeys are often solitary, but many influential Indian artists—such as Madhvi and Manu Parekh, Arpita and Paramjit Singh, Devayani and Kanwal Krishna, Gulammohammed and Nilima Sheikh, Reba and Somnath Hore, and Jyotsna and Jyoti Bhatt—shared lives and creative paths. This exhibition showcases how intimacy, dialogue, and support have shaped artist couples—artists with different styles but linked by shared environments and partnerships. Partnership acts as a silent catalyst, fostering experimentation, critique, and understanding, while each artist maintains their path. Art became conversation and contrast within bonds. Using DAG’s collections, this largest-ever exhibition offers insight into these partnerships and practices. It celebrates how parallel visions, driven by dialogue, love, trust, and exchange, fuel creativity.

‘Shared Lives, Distinct Visions: Artist Couples In India’ is on view from 11 November 2025 to 3 January 2026, at The Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai. Learn more here.

‘What The Land Remembers’ by Nilaya Anthology is a multimedia exploration of landscapes, both tangible and imagined, and how they are reshaped by the bodies that traverse them. Indian-Norwegian interdisciplinary textile designer Helena Bajaj Larsen presents a selection of hand-knotted and flat-woven textiles inspired by the geographies of the global south. Photographer Tenzing Dakpa captures the region of Kurdi in South Goa, which was submerged by the construction of the Salaulim Dam and only partially reappears for a few months each year, while Gaia Pawar Shapiro’s dream-like paintings blur the lines between reality and personal memory landscapes.

‘What The Land Remembers’ is on view at The Galleries, Nilaya Anthology, Lower Parel, Mumbai from 12 November 2025 to 31 December 2025. Learn more here.

TARQ returns to Art Mumbai 2025 with a presentation of nine artists exploring the porous boundaries between nature, time, material, and making. Moving beyond representation, the booth highlights artistic practice as attunement—listening, recording, and witnessing subtle world changes. Each work shows sensitivity to material and process, revealing how matter can hold memory and meaning.

Beyond the booth, Savia Mahajan’s Sculptural installation, Shape–Shifting Field, will be displayed in the Sculpture Park curated by Veeranganakumari Solanki, expanding TARQ’s dialogue between organic and elemental. Together, the artists’ practices trace intimate ecologies of making and being— rooted in reflection, receptivity, and rhythm. Instead of a single narrative, TARQ’s presentation gathers quiet urgencies shaping contemporary existence.

Art Mumbai is taking place at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse from 13 to 16 November 2025. Learn more here.

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