Modern masters come to Delhi
11 Dec 2012 1:11 AM GMT
Exploring the unexplored. That is the motto of this exhibition that starts at the Lalit Kala Academy today. The works on display are by the two masters of modern Indian art – Nandalal Bose and Benodebehari Mukherjee – who need no introduction for art lovers.
The current issue of ArtVarta (a bi-annual magazine by Akar Prakar gallery), which is on contemporary photography in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh put together by Ina Puri, will also be launched at the exhibition.
‘The aim was to look for works which we haven’t seen before. I had decided we will not take works from any institution like Lalit Kala Academy or National Gallery of Modern Art and the others,’ said curator Debdutta Gupta. Another interesting aspect of the exhibition, Works by Nandalal Bose and Benodebehari Mukherjee, is that it will showcase textile designs by Mukherjee and his works from his days as a student in Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. The exhibition, by Kolkata-based gallery Akar Prakar, had earlier received much appreciation when it took place in Kolkata.
There are more than 190 works on display and about a 100 odd are on sale. ‘You can actually own a work by the masters within Rs 50,000,’ said Reena Lath, director, Akar Prakar.
The exhibition also puts emphasis on letters by Nandalal Bose. Whenever Bose wrote a letter to a friend or relative or simply sent a postcard, he drew on it. One side of the letter contained words and the other side almost inevitably contained his drawings.
All his works are an expression of his life experiences captured through the strokes of his pen. The postcards are drawn with subjects of mundane, everyday concerns. He drew about man and nature, little details of everyday living. On one of the postcards, which he drew while his stay at Hazaribagh (the letter was written to his son-in-law Santosh Kumar Bhanja). Here he captured the lives of the local potters in pen and ink; how they burnt the clay, what their furnace looked like and how the women carried earthen pots on their heads formed subjects of this letter.
Bose observed certain technologies very minutely. Interestingly, he applied the knowledge that he gathered from this to his art. For example, he saw a device called a chumbu used for applying mehendi. He filled colours in such a chumbu and used them for drawing mountains. As a result of this experiment, the picture gained a relief-like effect. In later years, he introduced the technique of drawing with this device to his students at Santiniketan. Mukherjee was one of them. The works on display here will be the ones using water colour, wash technique, pen and ink, calligraphy, textile design, printmaking, lithograph and ink and brush. They have been sourced from private collections and families and friends of the artists.
An untitled work by Bose (which he had sent to Abanindranth Tagore in Puri) shows a crow and a mouse. Bose did this in the Mughal miniature format using wash technique. Another by Mukherjee has Bijoya greetings on one side and the opposite is splashed with black ink. In the middle there are three leaves of the Nayantara flower found in abundance in Santiniketan. He drew this when he was already becoming blind.
‘It shows how he translated his sorrow of visual impairment into the language of art,’ said curator Gupta. We think this one is worth a dekko.
DETAIL
At: Lalit Kala Academy, Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Feroze Shah Road
When: 11 to 17 December
The current issue of ArtVarta (a bi-annual magazine by Akar Prakar gallery), which is on contemporary photography in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh put together by Ina Puri, will also be launched at the exhibition.
‘The aim was to look for works which we haven’t seen before. I had decided we will not take works from any institution like Lalit Kala Academy or National Gallery of Modern Art and the others,’ said curator Debdutta Gupta. Another interesting aspect of the exhibition, Works by Nandalal Bose and Benodebehari Mukherjee, is that it will showcase textile designs by Mukherjee and his works from his days as a student in Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. The exhibition, by Kolkata-based gallery Akar Prakar, had earlier received much appreciation when it took place in Kolkata.
There are more than 190 works on display and about a 100 odd are on sale. ‘You can actually own a work by the masters within Rs 50,000,’ said Reena Lath, director, Akar Prakar.
The exhibition also puts emphasis on letters by Nandalal Bose. Whenever Bose wrote a letter to a friend or relative or simply sent a postcard, he drew on it. One side of the letter contained words and the other side almost inevitably contained his drawings.
All his works are an expression of his life experiences captured through the strokes of his pen. The postcards are drawn with subjects of mundane, everyday concerns. He drew about man and nature, little details of everyday living. On one of the postcards, which he drew while his stay at Hazaribagh (the letter was written to his son-in-law Santosh Kumar Bhanja). Here he captured the lives of the local potters in pen and ink; how they burnt the clay, what their furnace looked like and how the women carried earthen pots on their heads formed subjects of this letter.
Bose observed certain technologies very minutely. Interestingly, he applied the knowledge that he gathered from this to his art. For example, he saw a device called a chumbu used for applying mehendi. He filled colours in such a chumbu and used them for drawing mountains. As a result of this experiment, the picture gained a relief-like effect. In later years, he introduced the technique of drawing with this device to his students at Santiniketan. Mukherjee was one of them. The works on display here will be the ones using water colour, wash technique, pen and ink, calligraphy, textile design, printmaking, lithograph and ink and brush. They have been sourced from private collections and families and friends of the artists.
An untitled work by Bose (which he had sent to Abanindranth Tagore in Puri) shows a crow and a mouse. Bose did this in the Mughal miniature format using wash technique. Another by Mukherjee has Bijoya greetings on one side and the opposite is splashed with black ink. In the middle there are three leaves of the Nayantara flower found in abundance in Santiniketan. He drew this when he was already becoming blind.
‘It shows how he translated his sorrow of visual impairment into the language of art,’ said curator Gupta. We think this one is worth a dekko.
DETAIL
At: Lalit Kala Academy, Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Feroze Shah Road
When: 11 to 17 December
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