When one discusses Modernism—the philosophical and art movement, which swept the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—the names of cities like Vienna, Paris, Berlin and London to some extent, are inadvertently mentioned in the same breath. But, a new research project, Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile (METROMOD), which has been in the works for nearly four years, is attempting to tell the history of this movement from a more global perspective.

“We wanted to get away from the notion that modernism was generated in these urban centres, and [instead], see it as a movement that developed through an exchange of ideas in different places, through the migration movements of exiled artists,” shares Rachel Lee, a postdoctoral researcher, who is currently based in Mumbai. Lee is part of a stellar team of researchers, who’ve been mapping the life and work of refugee European artists, between 1900 and 1950, when wars, dictatorships, violence and oppression forced thousands of artists to emigrate.