During the British Raj in India of the late 19th and early 20th Century, Rabindranath Tagore (1861- 1941) established an art institution in Santiniketan, Bengal in 1921, for practicing his principle about art. He insisted “art must be both national and international, local and world-wide.” The art school in Santiniketan became the centre for paintings with local art, which was derived from the pan-Indian, primitive forming methods of Tagore himself and the nationalistic and expressionist style of his successors, etc. Meanwhile, his nephew, Abanindranath Tagore (1871-1951) led the Bengal School of Art with his pursuit for an ideal and a humanitarian spirit based on Orientalism. Under the British dominance, there existed two conflicting forces in Indian art: It was westernized under the influence of European art, but simultaneously, anti-British movement which strongly resisted colonial power aroused cultural nationalism. In the complex circumstance, the Bengal School of Art and the institution in Santiniketan developed their duality in style, encompassing both national and international tendency. For a close examination of the binary aspects, this study deals with the historical fact that the Bengal School enthusiastically adopted Japanese style of painting to build up its own technique and style. Also, it focuses on how Rabindranath Tagore and his followers set up regionalism through their educational principles and practices in the process of exploring an artistic form that could reconcile the Western and Indian culture. Specifically, it looks into the historical background, doctrine, leading figures and their works which constituted India's nationalist art in Bengal of the early 20th century. In other words, the paper aims at studying one of the most important movement in the modern Indian art and how it led to the art of India today. The front and the back of Independence, a part of artists from Bengal School and Santiniketan School sincerely desired to overcome conservatism and regionalism which the previous generation artists had pursued. For example, Jamini Roy had revealed Indian community spirit with a lot of illustrations and printmaking works. And the artists of Progressive Artists Group(PAG) in Bombay which was the place of the most progressive city at that time, tried to isolate the cause of the problem of the Indian modern art. Nevertheless filial artists wanted to make a clean break with the past, specific discussions and practices surrounding nationalism and internationalism of Bengal and Santiniketan School couldn't be ignored in the modern art field of India. From Souza and Husein belonged the 1st generation artists after the Independence to Anish Kapoor, Indian artists haven't been irrelevant to the topic of nationalism and internationalism of Bengal and Santiniketan School under the experience of colonialism.