The quintessential Bengali babus and bibis are perhaps Lalu Prasad Shaw’s favourite subjects. Captured in their quotidian existence—a sari-clad woman combing her long mane, reading a book or simply resting, a man in dhoti-kurta at a fish market, or taking a stroll, slinging an umbrella the life of the Bengali middle class is recreated on canvas in a multitude of hues. Animated in their execution, Shaw’s paintings evoke nostalgia, sometimes even a chuckle.
The line plays the muse in his works, and not just in his paintings. It takes a life of its own, also in his linocuts, etchings and drawings. It is bold, well-defined and appears to be sure of its purpose. Sometimes it’s a single stroke of black ink or crayon that defines the work, at other times it’s
a small, repetitive incision that brings the work together. But the line is always emphatic and captures the viewer’s attention.
“When I look at the faces, the strong lines, I am reminded of Abanindranath Tagore’s masks. I think Shaw must have drawn inspiration from there. He is brutal in the way he brings these people alive,” says Ina Puri, who curated a retrospective of the artist recently at Delhi’s Bikaner House.
Organised by Kolkata-based gallery Art Exposure, the show, titled Lalu Prasad Shaw––Early and Recent Works, had on display 75 of the artist’s works, starting with early academic graphics and drawings to the figurative paintings in tempera that chronicle the artist’s seven-decade-long creative journey.
“Everybody interprets his graphics differently. When Shaw works with burin (an engraving tool used in printmaking), what is it that he’s doing? The images are non-representational but concealed in his stark black and white lines, there’s a lot happening,” Puri continues.
Born in 1937, Shaw lived through the turbulent years of Partition and the Bengal famine. The Naxal uprising in the east seeped into his works as well. “His graphics are abstract expressions. In strong lines and boundaries, one can see the pain of Partition,” says artist Debashish Mukherjee, who conducted a walkthrough of the show.
Puri recalls fellow printmaker and artist KG Subramanyan saying that he could see many different emotions in Shaw’s graphic works from love and happiness to loneliness. Shaw, who currently lives and works in Kolkata, broke into the Indian art scene during the Sixties when the art world was seeing a resurgence of printmaking. He worked alongside Bengal greats such as Somnath Hore and Sanat Kar. Shaw graduated from Calcutta’s Government College of Art, where he learnt European techniques to create watercolour paintings, working with oils, and portraiture, but he was always on the lookout for
a style of his own.
The artist found himself drawn to indigenous styles. Soon elements from the Kalighat pat paintings and the Mughal miniatures emerged in his practice. An example of the reinterpretation of the pattachitra features a cat and a fish. Part of the Delhi show, its simplistic figurative form, executed in Shaw’s familiar deft lines, is arresting.
“The sensitivity with which he makes these drawings––dogs, pigs or the boar––is incredible,” Puri says.
Talking about Shaw’s babu-bibi portraits, she explains, “There are double borders on these works seen in the Mughal miniature paintings. The framing too is done in a way that it looks almost like the artist is taking a photograph in an old-fashioned studio.”
But, is his practice, rooted so firmly in a bygone era, still relevant?
According to Mukherjee, the simplicity of Shaw’s works keeps them pertinent. “Shaw might not come across as a political artist, because his works capture the mundane daily life, but daily life is also political,” says the Noida-based artist.
Puri agrees. Besides Shaw’s works marking a significant period in Bengal’s art history, they are “completely original”. “His paintings leave the viewer perplexed. Shaw’s approach is that of
a modernist, but his concerns are contemporary,” she says.