Vintage calendar art offers a vibrant window into India’s popular culture, blending mythology, cinema, and daily life. These colourful lithographs, once ubiquitous in homes and shops, celebrated deities, freedom fighters, film stars, and idealized beauty, creating a unique visual folklore that defined an era.
Sumant Batra’s collection is a remarkable archive of this ephemera. It meticulously preserves calendars spanning the 20th century, featuring patriotic imagery, commercial advertisements, and portraits of national leaders and freedom fighters. The collection vividly chronicles the freedom movement and iconic Indian monuments, serving as an invaluable visual record of the nation’s socio-cultural and political evolution.
Sumant Batra is the Founder and Managing Trustee of Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation. Indian Cinema Heritage Foundation is a public charitable trust set up to establish and operate Indian cinema heritage museum, archive, library, research and resource centre, and cultural spaces. The Foundation undertakes preservation, restoration and conservation of cinema and related memorabilia, artefacts, equipment, books, magazines, other material related to cinema history and heritage. It also undertakes research and documentation of the history and heritage of Indian cinema and its people, and preserve the legacy of the people who have contributed to Indian cinema. The Foundation is documenting the contribution of artists and technicians from Goa to Indian cinema.
For more details, visit www.cinemaazi.com/ichf
