Floor 1 of the CentroCentro cultural centre presents an exhibition from 23 March to 16 July, in which a selection of 84 works created in South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries from the Edwin Binney III Collection held at the San Diego Museum of Art in the United States will be on display.

Organised by Evolucionarte in collaboration with CentroCentro and the San Diego Museum of Art, the exhibition is divided into two sections. The first takes an in-depth look at the role of the elephant in Indian courtly painting.  Court artists produced splendid paintings and studies of this animal, many of which were admired in albums, while others were created as independent compositions or designs intended for transfer to other media.  The second section examines life in the royal court through images related to power, hunting and love.

The San Diego Museum of Art boasts one of the finest and most complete collections of South Asian paintings anywhere outside of India, thanks to the legacy of Edwin Binney III (1925-1986), one of the top experts on the subject in modern times.  The collection, which consists of almost 1,500 paintings, aspires to be encyclopaedic, with works from all of the important schools from the 12th to the 19th centuries, including paintings created for the Mughal, Deccan, Rajasthani and Pahari courts of India.

Image Credits:

• A Thakur of Jhilai on horseback. Rajasthan, Jhilai. Around 1760-1770
• Sangram Singh's elephant Madan Murat. India, Rajasthan, Mewar, 1725
• A couple embracing on a terrace. Rajasthan, Jaipur, around 1835