Biography
Founded in New York's East Village in 1982 and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as a commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment. Since then, Nature Morte has become synonymous in India with challenging and experimental forms of art; championing conceptual, lens-based, and installation genres and representing a generation of Indian artists who have gone on to international exposure. The gallery now has two exhibition spaces in New Delhi. The main gallery is located at the Dhan Mill complex in the Chhatarpur area, in the extreme south of the city. Within this mixed-use complex comprised of boutiques, cafes and artists’ studios, Nature Morte occupies a 400 square meter space on the ground floor at the center of the complex, where we host our major exhibitions. In addition, a secondary gallery is in the neighborhood of Vasant Vihar, measuring 70 square meters and used for smaller shows. The Vasant Vihar space also houses the gallery’s offices, private viewing rooms, and expanded storage.
In addition, the gallery has maintained multiple branches in various locations: Berlin (2008-2014), Calcutta (2006-2009), and at the Oberoi Gurgaon hotel (2011-2014). Nature Morte also hosts large scale exhibitions in the Famous Studios, Mumbai annually. The gallery is owned by its co-directors: Aparajita Jain and Peter Nagy.
Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs (starting with The Armory Show in New York in 2005) and has participated in Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo, Art Dubai, Tokyo Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, and Frieze London and New York, among others. Nature Morte has also organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India and combining their works with those of Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In addition to its own programming, Nature Morte has collaborated with institutions in India such as the British Council, the Alliance Francais, the Sanskriti Foundation, the India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, the Italian Cultural Center, Khoj International Artists Association, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in both New Delhi and Mumbai. Today, Nature Morte represents such well-known artists as Subodh Gupta, Jitish Kallat, Anita Dube, Bharti Kher, Reena Saini Kallat, Manisha Parekh, Imran Qureshi, Mona Rai, Pushpamala N., Seher Shah, Thukral & Tagra, Raqs Media Collective, and Asim Waqif, as well as others.
