Sarala’s Art Centre marks six decades with a nostalgic exhibition in Chennai

Celebrate 60 years of Sarala's Art Centre with the nostalgic exhibition "Garden of Our Memories – I" in Chennai.

It is not every day that the works of Akkitham Narayanan, MF Husain, C Douglas and Achutan Kudallur share the same wall. At Garden of Our Memories – I, now showing at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Sarala’s Art Centre brings together nearly 200 paintings and sculptures by artists who have intersected with the gallery over its six-decade journey. 

Founded in 1965 by Soli J Daruwala and Moti Daruwala, Sarala’s Art Centre was among the first private galleries in South India dedicated to modern and contemporary art. The venture grew out of a framing business Daruwala established in Madras after working in the framing section of the Chemould Art Gallery in Bombay. Widely considered among the city’s first commercial framers, the Daruwalas soon expanded the space into a gallery. 

Sarala Banerjee and Bishwajit Banerjee | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

At a time when cities like Bombay and Delhi were shaping the national discourse around Modernism, the gallery created a crucial platform in Madras for artists experimenting with new visual languages and helped anchor the region’s emerging modern art movement.

According to Sarala Banerjee, daughter of Soli and Moti Daruwala and the second-generation owner of Sarala’s Art Centre, students and practising artists from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, the country’s first art college, would often gravitate towards the modest gallery space. “Art students and artists had no place to go to talk about contemporary art, so they would come to this little gallery and chat with my parents. That’s how the community grew,” she recalls. 

Soli Daruwala with Husain and the then queen of Greece | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement