Art Deco Nasik





Note Aided by rapid globalization and transcontinental travel, the Art Deco movement—a Parisian innovation that made its international debut at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs in 1925—arrived on the shores of the port city of Bombay in the 1930s. This artistic movement featured extensively in contemporary architecture, art, textiles, products, automobiles, and jewellery design. It ushered in the zeitgeist of the 1930s, defined by a cosmopolitan and modern lifestyle, glamour, and luxury.

Transcending the borders of Bombay, connected cities such as Thane, Pune, and Nashik soon followed suit, adopting the Art Deco style, particularly in architecture and furniture design. Sleek forms, streamlining, layering, and the repetition of vertical and horizontal planes, along with ziggurat-like building profiles and geometric grilles, became prominent features of architectural production during this period.

In Nashik, Art Deco influences are evident as modern infills within the core of the old city, including neighborhoods like Raviwar Karanja, but are even more pronounced in the outer ring of neighborhoods that likely developed around the 1940s and 1950s, such as along old Bombay-Agra Road, Gole Colony, Vakil Wadi, Shalimar and Ganjamal.

As in the rest of India, the Art Deco movement in Nashik symbolized the dawn of a new age, marked by increasing cosmopolitanism and the aspirations that accompanied it.


ContributorPranjali Mathure