Rani Chanda's woodcuts and lithographs (1932) at Gallerie 88 give us a flashback of an intense sensibility – the bold and fluent line work, as well as the unity and animation of the entire surface, strongly suggest that she drew directly on the block, and the cutter followed her marks as closely as possible. She draws attention to the medium of woodcut that was first introduced into printmaking, in prints that go back more than eight decades.
The highly skilled craft of engraving, in which a wedge-shaped metal tool known as a burin is used to gouge clear, sharp furrows in a metal plate, appears to have been adapted from goldsmithing.
History states that the practice of printmaking as a fine art medium gained immense popularity with the establishment of Kala Bhavan founded by the Tagores in 1919. An earlier organization, also established by the Tagores, was the Bichitra Club – where new styles of painting and printmaking were explored. The three Tagore brothers, Abanindranath, Gagendranath and Samarendranath (nephews of Rabindranath Tagore), transformed the veranda of their Jorasanko residence into a meeting ground for the club and frequently hosted art salons there. Of the three brothers who spearheaded the Bichitra Club, artist Gagendranath Tagore took a special interest in lithography, and set up his own lithographic press in 1917. He later published an album of his prints.
Nandalal Bose was closely associated with the Bichitra Club and he took charge of Kala Bhavan which became a print maker's abode. Ramendranath Chakravorty, Binode Behari Mukherjee, Ramkinker Baij, Manindra Bhusan Gupta and Biswarup Bose sustained great interest in printmaking during the 1930s and 40s.
They experimented freely with its various techniques and created several intaglio and relief prints. This was the turning point for printmaking in India, as artists used the Western lexicon to create works that echoed an indigenous modernity, to make fine art. Rani Chanda was among these modernists who celebrated the Indian pastoral. In a series of works that reflect the rural idyll, and the everyday idiom of livelihood, here are works in which flat thickened lines create a vivid linear pattern against the creamy background. To create texture, Rani used a great variety of strokes – from the long, sinuous lines that create the human forms to the short flecks of the coarsely woven saris; she also made use of crosshatching in the deepest shadows to model the forms. 'The Child' and 'The Solace' both exemplify this artistic treatment while 'Household Duties' is a sinuous statement in the creation of the slender figured sadhu who smokes his hookah.
Her work, 'The Village' on the other hand, achieves a tone that gives her thatched huts a three-dimensional presence, evolved in a technique of shading her woodcut with short lines of varying width, a method that seems to have derived from her drawing practice.
Her 'Winter Beasts' show the subtle tonalities that could be obtained with this method. In the two figures huddled in the winter chill with the thatched huts in the background we see an almost unimaginable density of fine distinct lines, whose great variety creates form, texture, and shading simultaneously. In 'Santhal Girl,' 'Hill Stream' and 'Husking Rice' we see a system of uniform, equidistant, parallel lines that curve around the feminine forms to give them a sculptural presence. Rani elaborates on this system by developing flexible engraved lines that become thicker or thinner along its length, thus allowing the engraver to vary the lightness or darkness in an area without adding more lines. The swelling and tapering line is carried to new extremes by the virtuosic quality of lines used in autumn for the thatched huts.
In the 'Shade' is a classic masterpiece – it reflects evidence of indepth and devotional aesthetic sensibilities. The scene is densely filled with the texture of short, angular lines that compose and are enlivened by trees in the form of curling contours – to create an impression of great animation. It creates a sense of classical calm and balance. Rani Chanda who used to dance in the dramas composed by Rabindranath Tagore was indeed a being of great aesthetic ability and had a keen power of observation and absorption of life in rustic hamlets. This show at Gallerie 88 echoes her technical virtuosity, intellectual scope and psychological depth in the way she created her woodcuts.
It also puts the spotlight on a woman artist who reveled in the classic hands on approach of printmaking in the 1930's to add to the leaves of Indian art.