Rathin Maitra (b. 1913), along with Prodosh Das Gupta, established the Calcutta Group, which gained widespread recognition in India for its influential contribution to modern Indian painting much before the Progressives.
Rathin Maitra was the first in independent India to have been invited for an exhibition of his works at The Bombay Art Society, on 22nd September 1947; years before the first inaugural exhibition of the Progressive Artists' Group at the Bombay Art Society Salon in 1949. The show was opened by the Mayor of Bombay, Mr. A. P. Sabawalla, and it was functional from 23rd to 29th September 1947.
.png)
Also in charge of founding the Modern Art Society and the Society of Artists in Calcutta, he blended his iconography and thoughts with the new simplification approach by using free-flowing lines and vibrant colours.
Page from Bengal Painter's Testimony, 1944
The Labourer Couple, 1944
Rathin Maiitra, Untitled drawing on the Bengal Famine. Illustration in Krishen Chander, I Cannot Die: A Story of Bengal
Page from People's War, April 1945
Rathin Maitra, Multicolour Mural published in People's War, September 1945
Book covers by Rathin Maitra for poet Martin Kirman, the artist Subho Tagore, and poet Bishnu Dey:
Rathin Maitra, Refugee Influx, 1947
Page from the Free Press Bulletin (23rd September, 1947) with report on his one man show in Bombay, held by the Bombay Art Society
Untitled, c. 1955
Ink and brush drawings from the late 1960s:
Rathin Maitra, Untitled, 1983, Oil on Canvas
Rathin Maitra, The Attack, 1962, Oil on Canvas
Rathin Maitra, City Sentinel, 1955, Oil on Board
Rathin Maitra, Floods 1970, 1975, Oil on Board
Important References
- Sanjukta Sundaresan, Partisan Aesthetics: Indian Art and 20th-Century Decolonisation
- Anuradha Roy, Cultural Communism IN BENGAL 1936-1952
- Nicolas Nercam, The Encounter Between Asian and Western Art, 20th-21st Centuries
