Mangled limbs. Vividly painted images of severed fingers. A nude with a gash across its torso. Jogen Chowdhury’s works have always been reflective of the agony he feels. Be it his post-Partition days in Calcutta (he was born in Faridpur, present-day Bangladesh) or his period of study in Paris, Chowdhury admits that he has always been influenced by his environment. “My paintings reflect the situations around me and are motivated by social and political injustices.
Dark is part of my psyche,” he says. Gallery Art Exposure in Kolkata is presently showcasing Chowdhury’s works made during the pandemic. Titled ‘An Unfinished Poem’, the disturbing yet riveting images are a powerful comment on the recent history of our country. An octogenarian, Chowdhury’s imagination is still largely coloured by the memory of the small village in Bangladesh with its trees and temples. Coming from a family of zamindars, indulging in the annual Durga Puja festivities, community theatre performances... the young Chowdhury would keenly observe the kumbhars (artisans) and would later use their leftover natural colours to make his paintings.
He admits that his larger-than-life eyes of women owe their origins to those moments of childhood. Art curator and collector Ina Puri writes of Chowdhury’s oeuvre, “He had seen some of the most turbulent periods faced by the nation. Chowdhury has often drawn inspiration from poetry and it appears in his painted world. The present exhibition portrays how the artist is conflicted and subject to different moods as the pandemic rages across the world. There are days of dark depression, at other moments, he feels lightness.” But unlike larger compositions, the present works are small format.
Chowdhury’s figures bring to mind another Indian great—Bhupen Khakhar. In fact, with their distorted canvas merging with revulsion, and intimate figures streaked with disillusionment, the two artists had a mutual admiration club. Khakhar famously described Chowdhury’s figures as ‘vulnerable’, just like his own. Prod the 81-year-old into talking about it, and he humbly says, “Maybe it is because I like to leave a part of my compositions incomplete.” It was the French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas and closer home, another powerhouse Bengali talent, Rabindranath Tagore, who prompted Chowdhury to aim for the incomplete picture, as he believes “it held the composition in place”.
Besides these luminaries, Chowdhury like many was also inspired to a great extent by the Spanish great Pablo Picasso. As an artist, who at his first solo at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata (in 1963), managed to sell only one work for `125, Chowdhury understands the importance of works being appreciated by the market at the right time. Talking of his first sale, he says with a small laugh, “The idea was never to sell. It was kind of a get-together with friends. To me at that moment, artwork was like poetry.” For the last few years—since his teaching days in Santiniketan in 1987—he has been actively buying works by young artists. It naturally encourages emerging talent.
In 2019, he put it all together and opened the doors to the Jogen Chowdhury Centre for Arts in Kolkata. “Through the centre, I want to generate more interest in visual art and cultural activities,” he says. The Centre has space for residencies and boasts several of Chowdhury’s own works from his personal collection. As we get ready to sign off, Chowdhury fondly recalls close late contemporary, Manjit Bawa, and how they met in Delhi in 1972. Bawa had recently moved from London and Chowdhury had come to the Capital as keeper of the Rashtrapati Bhavan art collection. In their 30s, the duo—or, rather, the trio (the third being Bawa’s green scooter) struck up a friendship. “We would always be on the scooter, talk for hours and keep saying: ‘One day we will be known’.” Well, they are, and how.
When & Where
An Unfinished Poem; on till February 6; Gallery Art Exposure, 54B Mahanirban Road, Kolkata. The exhibition can also be viewed at https://artexposure.in