The ’43 Group is Formed

Following the rejection of their exhibition proposals by the conservative Ceylon Society of Arts, a few of Sri Lanka’s early Modernists form the ’43 Group. The group is established at an inaugural meeting attended, according to official records, by the following artists: Ivan Peries, his brother Lester James Peries, Aubrey Collette, George Claessen, Richard Gabriel, Harry Pieris, Lionel Wendt, WJG Beling, Ralph Claessen, Justin Daraniyagala, SR Kanakasabai, George Keyt and Manjusri Thero. Newer members are inducted into the group through recommendations and voting, and membership is maintained through a five-rupee subscription fee. 

The members of the group, affluent and educated, seek to establish a local Modernist idiom that keeps pace with Western Modernism while also setting itself apart. By agreeing to exhibit every work of art submitted to them, the group provides a platform for the country’s overlooked artistic potential. Armed with a studied understanding of European Modernist movements, along with an acute awareness of the impact of colonialism on Sri Lanka’s local art traditions, the artists adopt Modernist forms of representation to articulate their personal experiences of living in the country. Simultaneously, they reflect on the country’s Hindu and Buddhist past, to create a hybrid, distinctly Sri Lankan aesthetic. 

The group’s patronage of traditional Sri Lankan visual and performing arts as well as the exposure they provide to cultural heritage and contemporary art from around the world, through photographs, reproductions and performances, in addition to annual exhibitions of their own work between 1943 and 1950, forms a unique pedagogical resource not only for the wider public but also for its own artists, many of whom have not had the opportunity to travel abroad. In this way the group becomes a substantial force in Sri Lanka’s cultural landscape, despite negative local reviews citing an excessively Western orientation. Several of these exhibitions also attract the critical attention of cultural commentators such as John Berger and Pablo Neruda, besides that of various Western media outlets.