Bengal School

Capturing Delicacy: An In-Depth Exploration of Surendranath Ganguly's Masterpiece Kartikeya

Within the sphere of art historical exploration, the oeuvre of Surendranath Ganguly emerges as a subject of intriguing contemplation. A notable practitioner born in 1885, Ganguly's artistic journey found its genesis at the Government School of Art Calcutta, under the guidance of luminaries such as EB Havell and the visionary Abanindranath Tagore. Aligned with the artistic philosophy of Tagore, Ganguly, alongside Nandalal Bose, played an instrumental role in the revival of Indian artistic traditions that had been relegated to obscurity.

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Sunayani Devi: The first Indian woman painter to gain public recognition

Sunayani Devi was born in Calcutta, to the Tagore family of ingenious writers and painters. She grew up amidst the cultural ferment that was the Bengal Renaissance. She was brought up in the traditional and secluded women's quarters. She recalls her fascination with the devotional pictures in her aunt's room as a child. At that time, " it was unknown and unheard of for women to do anything."

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The history behind the Art Rebel Centre (1933) by Gobardhan Ash

Art Rebel Centre, founded in 1933, was formed and led by Gobardhan Ash, Annada Dey, and Bhola Chatterjee. Subsequently, some of those invited to submit their work in exhibitions accepted membership. These include Lalit Chandra, Haridas Ganguly, Samar Dey, Amar Dasgupta, Sachin Das, Kalikinkar Ghoshdastidar, Khagen Roy, and Suren Dey, among others. Manoj Bose and Rabi Bose became members too, despite not providing paintings for exhibitions. The following is a brief history of how Art Rebel Centre came to be. 

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Discovering layers, Bhanu Athaiya

"I wish my mother had seen all this because it was something that was just after her heart," said Radhika Gupta, the daughter of the Oscar-winning costume designer and artist Bhanu Athaiya. Talking about the documentation of her mother's antique textile collection recently consigned to Prinseps, Radhika Gupta dotes over her mother's inherited legacy.  

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A partial speech by Rabindranah Tagore from the Mandir at Santiniketan

...have hurt my ears severely. In entire India, it is only in Bengal, that Sanskrit pronunciation is such non-Aryan. Mutilation of Sanskrit in such a manner, I have not seen in any other state. Especially convolution of utter-able mantras is to be considered a blunder. Since it has hurt me, I had to say this.

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Rabindranath Tagore's speeches: Havell Hall

Today, dedicated to whose memory we have gathered together, whose memory-hall is to be founded today; it is necessary to tell something about him. His identity for many today is not that bright.

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SANKHA GHOSH: ‘The Silent Index Finger’

The passing away of noted Bengali poet, essayist, and Tagorian scholar, Sankha Ghosh, at the age of 90 on April 21st signifies an end of an era in Bengali literature and creates an irreplaceable void in the cultural domain of Bengali intelligentsia. Otherwise, soft-spoken and sober, Sankha babu in his immaculate white-dhoti-Punjabi, in his quiet and calm way became the most vociferous voice of Bengali youth and civil society in his writings. Be it on anything in the cultural field or the world around us, he became the conscience of every sensitive, educated Bengali, who never hesitated to speak out his mind, loud and clear, irrespective of the political regimes in the state.

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Ganesh Pyne: The Mystical Artist

An intensely private artist whose artistic imagination was fuelled by the strange, dark fantasy of his grandmother’s stories and charred by the horrors of his reality, Ganesh Pyne's paintings are quiet revelations of his personality. Pyne's intricate ink works, haunting temperas, and jottings are rich in imagery and symbolism, bordering along the uncanny and drawing our attention to a world beyond the familiar. His art deeply rooted in dark, unsettling images, derived from mythology and dreams. 

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On Bhupen Khakhar's encaustic painting - Ranjit Hoskote

At first sight, this encaustic painting – rendered in heated beeswax, into which pigments of various colours have been mixed – seems to be worlds away from what most viewers know of Bhupen Khakhar’s work. There are no limp-limbed yet curiously wide-awake men from a broad middle class; no domestic interiors laid out for erotic encounter; no playful or picaresque encounters among figures whose ordinariness is belied by some eccentric bodily feature or undecipherable gesture. No figures at all, in fact. 

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Manjit Bawa: the lyrical painter

Once upon a time, a dreamer derived his painterly language from Indian mythological tales, legends, and fables rich in moral and spiritual lessons. Manjit Bawa (b. 1941) introduced fragments of his thoughts, ideas, and poetry into the rational world throughout his artistic oeuvre. Born in Dhuri, Punjab, Bawa's childlike fascination with music, spirituality, and philosophy breathed heavily on his canvas. Manjit Bawa's artworks are mystical musicals that strike a chord and capture a dream.

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A historical rediscovery: the second PAG Catalogue, 1950

Stated below is the text of the second catalogue of the Bombay Progressive Artists' Group in collaboration with the Calcutta Group. Gobardhan Ash's works were exhibited in the joint show of the Calcutta Group and Progressive Artists’ Group alongside masters such as K.H. Ara, Francis Newton Souza, Maqbool Fida Husain, S.H. Raza, H.A. Gade, and S.K. Bakre at Calcutta in 1950. This document is indeed a historically prominent yet lesser-known artistic discovery in the world of modern Indian art. 

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Gobardhan Ash: the quiet master artist

A silent, dedicated artist content amidst the walls of paintings stacked in his Begampur mud house stirred a quiet revolution against the preconceived notions of artistic expression. No wonder Gobardhan Ash (b.1907) carved a niche for himself as an individualistic artist who fearlessly explored diverse artistic styles and techniques.

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Atul Bose and the Art of Portraiture

The art of portraiture seems much more enticing today when we live in a world where ‘portraits’ can be created at the click of a button with a single handheld device. There is something enigmatic about how artists in the past captured personalities with strokes of the brush and immortalized them in portraits. There is something romantic about the notion of portraits themselves, and how a sensitive artist could capture the physical characteristics as well as the psychological aspect of the subject of the portrait. 

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Bhanu's ode to the Progressive Artists' Group

Bombay, May 2010 - "I was exposed to paintings from a very young age. My father was a self-taught artist who sometimes painted in oils by studying the old European masters and sometimes following his own inspiration. In his studio, he had many books on paintings of European masters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Turner, Gainsboro, Constable, and others. I enjoyed looking at these books just as I enjoyed washing my father's brushes and pallet.

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Art of Atul Bose - by Partha Mitter

Atul Bose (1898-1977) was virtually forgotten in the decades following independence when the Progressive Artists of Bombay dominated in the era of Nehruvian modernism. Recently, many of these earlier artists are undergoing significant reassessment.

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Nandalal Bose - Haripura Posters

These posters by Nandalal Bose - made using tempera on handmade paper, were created around 1938 and were commissioned by Mahatma Gandhi. These belong to the permanent collection of the NGMA and were displayed at the India Pavilion in Venice Biennale. We do believe that this is the first time these have seen these for display outside the NGMA.

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Photographs From Santiniketan

A portfolio of original photographs from Santiniketan and the life and social norms present in the campus from the '40s and '50s. The photographs Mahatma Gandhi's visit to Santiniketan.

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1920's Jorasanko Zamindari Library

Here we have a particularly rare collection -- an entire library from a Jorasanko Palace. The Estate of its provenance has been documented as the most successful private enterprise in British India in the mid-19th century (Somerset Playne, Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa, 1917).

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Abanindranath Tagore : Asian Art

Abanindranath Tagore is a pioneering figure of modernism in India. Inspired by nationalist leaders who were demanding independence from the British, many Indians were using local products instead of imported and expensive foreign products.

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Sunayani Devi (1875 – 1962): An Overview

Sunayani Devi was an Indian painter born into the aristocratic Tagore family in Calcutta, West Bengal in 1875. She was a self-taught artist with no academic training in art. Inspired by her brothers, Abanindranath Tagore, Gaganendranath Tagore, and Samarendranath Tagore, she started painting only at the age of 3. She was married at the age of 11 to the grandson of Raja Ram Mohan Roy.

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