On the crossroad! is a private drawing by Rudolf, “Rudi”, “Rudy” von Leyden, which shows him in front of a signpost at a fork in the road (Flora Veit-Wild Archive n.d.). Art is on the left sign; geology is on the right sign. He chooses science. The cartoon was drawn in India and dates back to the first few months, perhaps the first year, when Rudolf von Leyden came to India for political reasons as a member of a German communist student group in May 1933. Observing the political developments in Germany - the forcible dismissal of his father from the ministry; the withdrawal of his parents from the Nazi-overcrowded capital of Berlin to the provincial Garmisch-Partenkirchen due to security considerations for his Jewish mother; and the abandonment of the family house in the noble district of Berlin-Dahlem - he realized that there could be no return to Germany anytime soon. His brother Albrecht, a business manager for Agfa since 1927 and with a good network all over India, tried to find a job for the recent PhD in geology, Dr Rudolf von Leyden, with some Indian mining companies.
However, Rudolf von Leyden’s life story shows us that he didn’t go one way or the other; his life was a transdisciplinary approach to both art and science, even after he dropped geology. In today’s terms he would be referred to as a hybrid, a practitioner of ArtScience, “whose deep skills and passions bridge several disciplines and who practise at times as artists and at times as scientists“ (Sarukkai/Malina 2020).
On the other hand, his artistic and scholarly skills opened up his commercial career. When initial efforts to follow his geological ambitions failed, he started pursuing his artistic inclinations. In 1934 Rudolf founded The Hand. Commercial Art Studio Rudolf von Leyden. In 1937, he found employment in the “Art & Layout Section” of the Advertisement Department of The Times of India, the biggest English newspaper in India. There, he later gained a managing position. In 1952, he joined Volkart Brothers, Switzerland’s leading retailer of colonial goods in India, as publicity manager and in 1957 became a general manager of Voltas, a collaboration between Volkart Brothers and Tata Sons, specialising in cooling technology. Working in advertisement, he carried out intensive market research for the respective businesses and products. He followed through with rigorous application of the results to achieve market success (see von Leyden, 1983). As a result, he soon took a leading role in the field of advertising in India, becoming President of the Indian Society of Advertisers.
Rudolf von Leyden fused art with research and based his writings on art on intensive investigation, including his art reviews. But he also worked as a cartoonist, book illustrator, poetry writer, and actor, and organized performances; he used his drawings and photographs to illustrate his research results on ancient Indian sculptures or Indian playing cards.
The ‘shifting landscape’ of independence-seeking India underwent dramatic changes in economic and political terms. By 15 August 1947, the process resulted in the modern independent nation-state of India. In post-colonial India under Jawaharlal Nehru, dam building became a symbol of modernization, mechanization and progress. In visual arts, the members of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) became “some of the main architects of Indian modernism, who came to fruition in Nehruvian India” (Mitter 2007, 227).
Socialist in mind, but successfully integrated in the economic life of Bombay and mixing with the social and business elite of Bombay, were Rudolf von Leyden and the Austrian art couple Käthe and Walter Langhammer. Together with the Viennese entrepreneur Emanuel Schlesinger, Albrecht “Lolly” von Leyden, Indian and Western ex-pat art connoisseurs, like the manufacturer of picture frames and later gallery owner Kekoo Gandhy, the scientist and art patron Homi Bhabha, the writer Mulk Raj Anand, the United States Information Service diplomat Wayne Hartwell and others, they formed an informal group in support of young avant-garde artists united by their vision for a modern Indian art movement. Particularly, they became supportive of members of the Progressive Artists’ Group (PAG) – a group of six young artists from different parts of India and from different social and religious backgrounds, who challenged the British dominated mainstream art perceptions of Bombay in the late 1940s. This informal group of associates were supportive for setting trends to promote international art exchange, art education, art presentation, art reflexion and art sales in Bombay. The late 1940s showed an “undeniable influence of the West and together with this renewed sensitivity to Indian tradition” in arts, “rebelliousness” was in the air; “a quest for new forms” (Dalmia 2003, 191) in the challenge to build a new, modern India.
“Every Sunday Rudi von Leyden, his brother Lolly and local artists such as Hebbar, Ara, Gaitonde, Husain and Raza met at Walter Langhammer’s residence, where his wife, the hostess, served coffee and delicious cookies to all her guests. The conversation invariably focussed on art” (Mehrotra 2002, 27). Open house events in the form of dinner parties, farewell parties and social gatherings were common in British colonial circles. This too, Leyden adopted to perfection; first at the family residence at 17, Palli Hill in the outskirts of Bandra, later in his residences with his Hungarian-Austrian graphic artist wife Nena von Leyden (née Olga Mafalda Braun Belatini, 1910–1964) at Jaiji Mansion, Belmont and Seabelle, both just one kilometre from the Langhammers.
As a public relations management employee of The Times of India, Rudolf von Leyden joined hands with The Times of India art director Walter Langhammer to open these newspapers for the young artists: with letters in form of favourable art critiques mainly by Leyden, with photos depicting the paintings of the Indian artists like a virtual show-case. After Rudi began drawing socio-political cartoons in the The Times of India publications by the mid 1930s (to see some, see Arbuthnot), he also began writing art reviews by the end of the 1930s.
“Rudy Von Leyden was perhaps the first ever art critic in Mumbai who was able to influence opinion in favour of modern art with his regular writings in Mumbai newspapers and journals” (Parimoo 1998, 63) – Professor Ratan Parimoo. On a provisional basis, Rudolf von Leyden focussed on modern and contemporary Indian art, trying to support the avant-garde movement of the PAGs, but wrote also about ancient Indian sculptures, photography and Ganjifa playing cards. He had started collecting the latter meticulously in the late 1930s to become the first international academic expert globally in the 1970s. “Not only will he be remembered for his forthright and insightful criticism but also for ably steering the course of Indian art towards a modernist direction. He imparted an erudition and perspective to his writings, which set parameters for reviewing and assessing art” (Dalmia 2001, 231) – renowned art-historian Yashodhara Dalmia. For Ranjit Hoskote, Leyden used formats of Western modern art criticism to make Indian artists aware of what was internationally intelligible, exposing their reflections to a global art movement (see Hoskote 2018).
In addition to his prominent role as an art critic – visualized by Walter Langhammer with his painting The Critic (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research under links; see also Bakre’s bust of Leyden and their relationship viewed via art-critiques) – and art historian, he wrote books and essays on Indian art and came to the aid of the young Indian painter Akbar Padamsee as an expert when the painter was on trial for the obscenity of his pictures. Rudolf von Leyden showed great interest in “the conditions under which art was made” (Dhage 2012). He studied art-promoting and art-supporting infrastructures in Europe and India. After traveling to Europe in 1947, he gave a lecture in the salon of the Bombay Art Society on the revival of art in post-war Europe, which sparked great discussions in Bombay. His institution building initiatives include founding membership with the “Cine Society” (1934), “Child Art Society” (1941), the “Artists’ Support Fund” (1948) and the Marg magazine (1946) as contributing editor. He lobbied for the Jehangir Art Gallery, was on the expert committee to set up the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi (1955), and was a member of the Advisory Committee to Homi Bhabha for the art collection at TIFR as well as of the international Jury for the First Triennale of Contemporary Art by the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi in 1968. Immediately after being granted British citizenship, Rudolf von Leyden joined the Bombay Art Society in 1940 where he served as a very active member in various committees for many years.
With his critical eye and his vision for Indian modern art, combined with systematic research and a broad knowledge of Indian and Western art, he advocated modernism in Indian art and promoted continuous international understanding and exchange in order to bring Indian art to the global level.

The author is working on a book project of a critical biography of Rudolf von Leyden.