-
Mukul Dey’s work is as much a pursuit for the roots for traditional Indian
art as it is a synthesis of Indian art with the contemporary western art of
England and America.
In his career spanning 60 years, he has created over 100 copper plates and
over 2000 paintings and drawings. He is especially known for his detailed
dry point etchings.
Mukul Chandra Dey (the middle name 'Chandra' was dropped later) began
schooling under the guidance of Rabindranath Tagore in 1905-06 in
Santiniketan. He then went on to study art informally under Abanindranath
Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore.
By the age of 18, his drawings and paintings were exhibited by the Indian
Society of Oriental Art (Kolkata) in Paris and London.
He accompanied Rabindranath Tagore to Japan (1916-17) and U.S.A. He trained in
intaglio printmaking under James Blanding Sloan in Chicago, where he showed
and sold his etchings at the Art Institute of Chicago. He has intricately
copied the frescoes in the caves of Ajanta in Aurangabad, transferring it to
canvas.
Dey had also studied at the Slade School of Art and the Royal College of
Art, London.
At the age of 33, he was selected for the Indian Educational Service and was
appointed as the first Indian Principal of the Government School of Art in
Calcutta. After 15 years of service, at the age of 48, he retired and left
Calcutta for Santiniketan where he settled in 1943. Till his death at the
age of 94, the artist lived almost the life of a recluse.
During the long intervening decades, he did printmaking, painting, wrote
books, and travelled to Polonaruwa and Sigiria in Sri Lanka to copy frescoes in
the temples. He has also copied frescoes found in the Sittanavasal cave
temple in South India.
During 1946-53, Dey studied temple terracotta of Birbhum, West Bengal, and
in 1952, had a joint show with T. Sugimoto, a Japanese artist based in
Kolkata.
He was devoted to classic art of the past, but his own work is the blending
of technical skill acquired in the best of English schools and burnished
later with cross-formalisation of Japanese and American styles.
Mukul Dey was elected life member of the Chicago Society of Etchers. He was
also member of the Advisory Committee for murals in New Delhi, and India
House, London (1927-28). He received the Jubilee Medal of King George V and
Queen Mary in 1936 and their Majesties’ Coronation Medal in 1937 and was the
first Principal to initiate the Women’s Department in the Government School
of Art, Kolkata (1924).
Dey went to U.S.A. on Fulbright Scholarship and was the curator of the National
Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (1953-54). In 1984, Dey was honoured with
`Abanindra Puraskar’ by the Government of West Bengal.
In 1987, he was elected a Fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, and
in the same year, the Rabindra Bharati University conferred an honorary
Doctorate on him.
Mukul Dey died in 1989 in Calcutta.
-
Mukul Dey’s work is as much a pursuit for the roots for traditional Indian
art as it is a synthesis of Indian art with the contemporary western art of
England and America.
In his career spanning 60 years, he has created over 100 copper plates and
over 2000 paintings and drawings. He is especially known for his detailed
dry...
Need help? For more information on Indian Art, please see our Art Guide. For help
with buying through Saffronart please click here. If you have any other questions, please contact us.
|