Exhibitions

Lot 147

Jaya Ganguly
Untitled

- According to a critic, "Jaya stands apart and single-mindedly continues to paint the kind of pictures that distinguishes her from being a mere performer. This is due to her commitment and serious approach to her work."

More than any other thing that one can notice about Jaya is that she represents a generation which confronts contemporary art with individuality and daring. Her pictures bring into view her own style and she has her own imperatives. In the world of art, Jaya's work stands out for its obvious concern with the aesthetics in art rather than commercial success. She is rated as one of the top painters and front-runners of the Bengal art scene that has produced some of country's finest talent. Powerful and enigmatic figures that brim with earthy energy, raw and powerful.

Jaya works with broad and sure brush strokes done in a spectrum of rich colors. The sure color strokes stand out and her work evokes the feeling that the world is full of organic tones that seem to breathe with a life force of its own.

The figures look massive and primitive, voluminous and these qualities give her figures a distinctive character. Dark men and women sitting in a closed world of their own seem to brood, looking into themselves with an enigmatic air. Her figures have structural compositional values and they seem to be full of tension and force.

Jaya Ganguly asserts that she is not a hard-core feminist, but being a woman she looks at the world with a woman's point of view. Her work seems to be about men and women both, as one cannot be without the other. Women from orthodox and bourgeoisie backgrounds, women who survive a monotonous and placid existence are a part of her pictures.

They not only show women are oppressed, but also the men who live around them are suppressed with outdated beliefs, rituals, convention which bind the bourgeois society with high walls all round.

The depth, intensity and even wisdom of the ordinary subjects living ordinary lives in her paintings have been commented upon.

Jaya attracts and repels at the same time, her figures are lethargic, unfathomable and deep, victims and survivors. Her canvas radiates volumes of energy. Her color, line, form and moving mass, thick and voluminous figures. The physical energy felt with excessive overtone turns into primitive force.

Jaya Ganguly's multiple laying of line and color is interesting. An element of surprise in her work is the quasi-abstract quality. Black and indigo add dynamism and highlight the work.

Jaya says her paintings are a strand of thought. A product of Indian Art College of Kolkata, she has had a number of shows in New Delhi, mumbai and Kolkata including the festival of India in Sweden in 1987. - According to a critic, "Jaya stands apart and single-mindedly continues to paint the kind of pictures that distinguishes her from being a mere performer. This is due to her commitment and serious approach to her work."

More than any other thing that one can notice about Jaya is that she represents a generation which confronts...

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