“As a person who discovered artists, Peter was not interested in making money. He was interested in putting the spotlight on a great artist. Amongst many gallerists in our country, he was a man who was selfless,” recalls writer and curator Uma Nair.
Peter Nagy, the gallerist and artist who helped shape contemporary Indian art, passed away at 66 in Delhi following prolonged illness. For those who knew him, his legacy lies in the opportunities he created for artists to experiment, find audiences and take their work beyond borders.
“Beyond his formidable professional legacy, there was always more to Peter: his humour, his candour, his friendships and his very particular way of looking at things,” noted Nature Morte executive director Aparajita Jain in a statement following his death on October 13. “He leaves us with his conviction, the independence of spirit and the belief in artists; empowering us to take his vision ahead.”
In 1982, Nagy co-founded Nature Morte with artist Alan Belcher in New York’s East Village. After moving to India, he revived the gallery in New Delhi in 1997. Initially operating through temporary exhibition spaces, including the Visual Arts Gallery at India Habitat Centre and Lokayata, Nature Morte introduced an approach to gallery-making that encouraged experimentation and brought diverse artistic practices into conversation.
“He loved India. He took it [Indian art] beyond Indian shores… All the others have followed him,” says Nair, recalling his participation in international art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York and Frieze in London. For Nair, Nagy was also a “silent curator” who preferred to keep the focus on artists. “He wanted the limelight to be on the artists. As a curator, I learned that from Nagy.”
A space for the unconventional
Among the artists associated with Nature Morte was Subodh Gupta, whose practice challenged conventional distinctions between everyday materials and fine art. Gupta first met Nagy in New York in 1997, when the latter was exhibiting his own work. Their encounter eventually developed into a friendship and professional partnership.
“He was my friend, my gallery. My relationship with him was a partnership too. He opened the door for me,” Gupta tells TMS. Nagy’s willingness to support work that did not always find immediate acceptance was particularly significant for Gupta. “He gave me the opportunity to exhibit the work when people were not accepting that kind of work,” he says.
Manisha Parekh, who worked with Nature Morte for several decades, remembers the energy Nagy brought to Delhi’s art scene through his early exhibitions in temporary spaces. “Peter brought in an amazingly refreshing energy because, at that point of time, he was only doing pop-up shows in spaces he had found,” she says.
Their professional association began with the group exhibition ‘Ada Aur Adoor’ at the Visual Arts Gallery in 1998. Parekh exhibited 25 small watercolours arranged as a strip along the wall. “That was the beginning, and ever since then we have collaborated on many group shows and about five to six solo shows as a Nature Morte artist,” she recalls.
For Parekh, Nagy’s distinctive contribution lay in his approach to exhibition-making, bringing together artists working across different practices and backgrounds. “He was very open to collaborative practices. He was very open in combining different kinds of artists,” she says. “What made him stand apart was the fact that he was an artist himself. He was a very good mentor.”
A relationship built over time
Nagy’s approach to gallery-making also left an impression on his peers, including Bhavna Kakar, gallerist at Latitude 28 and founder of the TAKE on Art magazine. She first met him in 2005, when he was presenting an exhibition of Dr Alka Pande at the Visual Arts Gallery and Anita Dube at Vadhera Art Gallery. Later that year, she visited Nature Morte and bought a few small works on paper by Jagannath Panda. “I remember Peter taking the works out himself and carefully packing them for me,” says Kakar.
Over the years, Nagy became a regular visitor to her exhibitions. They exchanged thoughts on art and the contemporary art scene, collaborated on the Sculpture Park and contributed to each other’s projects. “He was sharp, funny, fiercely opinionated and unfiltered,” she says.
Kakar remembers him as a crucial figure in connecting Indian contemporary art with international audiences. When she began travelling to art fairs abroad in 2006, Nagy was already a recognised name within the international gallery circuit. His contribution, she believes, went beyond taking Indian art abroad to positioning it within a larger international discourse.
His passing is also a loss of someone who had made India his home. Kakar was particularly moved to learn that he wished to return to India to spend his final days surrounded by those he loved. “For someone who spent so much of his life building bridges between artistic worlds, India was not merely where he worked; it was where he belonged,” she says.
For those who remember Nagy, his legacy lies in the artists he championed, the exhibitions he curated and the connections he forged between Indian and international art worlds. A meticulous gallerist who preferred to keep the spotlight on artists, he leaves behind a model of gallery-making in which experimentation and artistic freedom took precedence. Perhaps his most enduring contribution was the space he created for artists to be seen on their own terms.