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Lot 63

 

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Born and brought up in erstwhile Bengal, now Bangladesh, Jogen Chowdhury rejected the stylistic traditions of the Bengal School of painting soon after he began his career as an artist. Believing that the academic style of representation of Bengal School artists like Hemendranath Mazumdar conveyed heavy bourgeois leanings, Chowdhury looked instead to the Indian family and its folklore for inspiration. His figures, rendered freely and often... Born and brought up in erstwhile Bengal, now Bangladesh, Jogen Chowdhury rejected the stylistic traditions of the Bengal School of painting soon after he began his career as an artist. Believing that the academic style of representation of Bengal School artists like Hemendranath Mazumdar conveyed heavy bourgeois leanings, Chowdhury looked instead to the Indian family and its folklore for inspiration. His figures, rendered freely and often distortedly, thus recall the people of his everyday encounters - from Bengali housewives and their husbands to the politicians and businessmen on the streets of Delhi - delivered with a mythical lyricism that lifts them from their mundane lives.

In the present lot, like many of his works, Chowdhury chooses to explore a specific point in time or 'situation', rather than a narrative. According to the artist, whereas "Life is a mystery and it is inexplicable", a situation may be isolated and explained. "In such circumstances, there is tension that may be apparent, but for me, that is what is real. It is this factor that prompts me to conceive a magical situation which is akin to magic realism" (Saffronart interview).

Here, Chowdhury crowds four figures into the frame; a seemingly older couple who are fully clothed, and another younger pair who are naked. Symbolic perhaps of the present and the past, these figures share a compact space that speaks volumes about their relationships, and their evolution with the passage of time. The artist notes, "One of the subjects that has repeatedly occurred in my paintings is the man- woman relationship and the various facets of it. I am fascinated with the complexity, the sensitivity and the dramatic element in it. Such relationships embrace a prime area of our life existence and I enjoy focusing on these relationships" (as quoted in R. Siva Kumar, Jogen Chowdhury - Enigmatic Visions, Glenbarra Art Museum, Himeji, 2005, p. 76).

The voluminous yet fluid forms of the figures are contained by the strong line that is one of Chowdhury's hallmarks. The artist's unique idiom of distortion helps his figures and his viewers transcend the ordinariness and the predictability of their existence, and offers expression to the emotions they would otherwise keep hidden. Chowdhury's distortion also accommodates his consciousness of the different way in which Indian men and women sit and move - something he terms "the reality of the Indian form". As the artist's biographer R. Siva Kumar explains, "Disproportion is the essence of Jogen's bodies, the sign of their naturalness…In them disproportion is expression, never deformation." Particularly with the women he portrays, this distortion is only "external", enhancing the "reverence and sympathy" the artist feels for their situation (Ibid., p. 9, 86, 91).

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