A silent, dedicated artist content amidst the walls of paintings stacked in his Begumpur 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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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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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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A pentimento (plural pentimenti) is an alteration in a painting which is evidenced by traces of previous work. The alteration shows that the artist changed their mind during the process of making the work.
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Jamini Roy, who was inspired by folk traditions created an Alpana or a floral motif that was considered to be sacred painting in Bengal because it was done on special occasions. The alpana which is usually done with hands and rice paint on the floor was done with tempera on cloth instead.
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Jamini Roy’s inspiration for folk art led him to experiment with sculpture along with paintings and sketches even though he had no formal sculpture training. This artwork depicts a preparatory sketch of three sculptures similar to crude dolls from folk art.
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Jamini Roy's rejection of the western academic style of painting led to him being inspired by Bengali folk paintings. Before he made the complete switch to the pat style paintings, he was depicting village life and folk. This work shows a personal reconstruction of another Indian reality that was often not seen in urban areas.
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One of the most iconic figures of modern Indian art of the mid-20th century, Jamini Roy’s reputation spilled over from the art world into a larger public and popular domain, and even as his name became synonymous in modern Indian art history with a reinvented "Bengali folk" style.
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Jamini Roy's earlier residence at 1/2B Ananda Kumar Chatterjee lane in North Kolkata was his home for sixteen years.
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In the midst of the triumph of Orientalists lead by E.B. Havell, the principal of the Government Art School in Calcutta, and Abanindranath Tagore, naturalism re-emerged in the 1920s in Calcutta partly due to Percy Brown's encouragement and because of the rise of the artists such as Hemendranath Majumdar.
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In India modernism starts due to a desire to move away from the academic art being practiced and advanced by the British. Abanindranath Tagore, Jamini Roy were the earliest of the Indigenous modernists.
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It is well documented that Jamini Roy was an academic portrait painter in the early days using oil paints. His experiments in the style of "Bengal school" and Academic portraiture is amply recorded.
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Jamini Roy's studio from the 40's basically consisted only of his son Amiya (nicknamed to 'potol' in the classic Bengali Daak naam tradition of coming up with the most silly nicknames that one can find) and another (of last name Chatterjee) whose job was to mix and create the tempera.
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Recording the possible disappearance of two works by Jamini Roy & Abanindranath Tagore.
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