They are the poster boys of Indian art that is making waves in the best galleries of the world. Subodh Gupta: the maverick artist from Khagaul, Bihar, who takes gleaming steel utensils from suburban kitchens and transforms them into artwork. Atul Dodiya: a quiet, bespectacled Kathiawadi art student from Ghatkopar, whose brushstrokes smudge the boundaries of high art and popular culture.

Track the journey of the two artists and you track the story of how a graphic language rooted in Indianness is enriching the global art lexicon. While galleries across the world lap up works of senior artists like Tyeb Mehta, Jogen Chowdhury and F.N. Souza, Dodiya and Gupta stand out as mid-career artists breaking new ground — both in terms of the big money their works fetch and the distinctive referencing of their roots. One of Gupta’s most striking works, Very Hungry God — a one-tonne skull crafted out of aluminum pots, pans, and other kitchen equipment, with a gaping mouth that demands to be fed — was snapped up recently by François Pino of Christie’s. Commissioned for the Nuit Blanche, an all-night arts festival held annually in Paris, it was installed for only 24 hours in a beautiful neo-Gothic church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle in the Goutte d’Or.district.

Collectors in the West, say art critics, tend to ask an annoying, but crucial question: what is Indian about an artist? “Both Subodh and Atul are painters who are culturally rooted, and it seems to be the opportune time for them to emerge as important figures,” points out Shireen Gandhy of Gallery Chemould. International art critic Peter Nagy, currently based in Delhi, for example, points out that Gupta’s work exploits, in new and innovative ways, the clichés through which India is seen. Both are also chroniclers of an India in the throes of globalisation — the energy of its bustling economy and the disquiet of migration and change are mirrored in their work.

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