Seventeen selected paintings by the celebrated and revolutionary artist Jamini Roy, from his humongous collection of thousands, is making waves in the city. Titled the ‘Jamini Roy Show,’ the exhibition is on at gallery Akar Prakar, Hauz Khas village till January 6.
The paintings have been arranged in a way that enable viewers’ understanding of the legendary artist’s work and appreciate the gradual drift of the artist’s style. Roy has always been known for not being too satisfied and constantly trying to obtain an innate mode of expression.
Akar Prakar’s co-owner and director Reena Lath says, “This show intends to bring out the connection between history of contemporary Indian Art with respect to contemporary art in the present. These art works are rarely brought out of the museums and lie there as an antique, but it is very important for people to know artists from different schools of art before and after our independence.”
Roy began his career by painting in the Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits, very much in keeping with his training in a British academic system. But by his late 30s began experimenting with the Kalighat Pat (Kalighat painting), which was a style of art with bold sweeping brush-strokes. He eventually forged the style of modern painting for which he is best known, a successful reinterpretation of traditional South Asian iconography by way of crisp, clean, modernist lines.
He went on to become one of the most celebrated modernists in the history of Indian painting and was honoured with the Padma Bhushan in 1955. He died in 1972 in Kolkata, where he had lived all his life, at the age of 85, a celebrated and revolutionary artist.
Pranabranjan Roy , an Indian art lover and an expert on Jamini Roy, says, “He had a latent belief in classicist values.
He believed that to reach out to a wide spectrum of spectators and appreciators, a linguistic continuity was sine-qua-non for even the most individualist artist. With such reasoning, Jamini babu created an individual Indian ‘modernist’ artist's unique kind of art, with an unmistakably Indian identity of a kind. That precisely is the reason why Jamini Roy needs to be celebrated as 'modernist' Indian artist, of highest significance, even if his art was not contextually as relevant as some of his contemporaries and juniors. Jamini Roy's is a self-contained autonomous art, at peace with itself.”
The gallery has been recognised this year in the list of 500 best galleries across the world. It has worked to promote history of Indian art across the country and abroad. At present along with the Jamini Roy show which extends till January 6, 2015, Akar Prakar is holding a photography show by Pablo Bartholomew, ‘Calcutta
Diaries’ mid-Dec in Kolkata.