Hemendranath Mazumdar (1894-1948)

Originally from a South Florida Estate

Good overall condition. Very small areas throughout, mostly along the edges, where it appears small losses of paint have been filled; the largest filled area being in the green carpet lower left. Previous conservation is visible under black light. Colors richer than in catalogue illustration.
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The story of early modernist, particularly post-Independence art in India is generally dominated by the Bombay Progressive Artists group, whose radicalism fascinated popular imagination and who enjoyed a greater degree of sustained patronage and international exposure throughout the twentieth century than other artists from the subcontinent. As such, the history of parallel art movements in other centers of India and the imperatives underlying these equally fascinating developments has largely been unexplored. 

To address this lacuna, we are delighted to present a selection of pre- and post-Independence art from Bengal, one of the preeminent centers of art production in India in the early twentieth century. Artists from the region were considered to be earliest harbingers of an 'Indian modern' idiom; however their contributions to the canon of Indian modernism have received little recognition.

Our featured selection of Art from Bengal has been carefully culled, representing a cross-section of trends in art production in this region for over half a century. Ranging in style from Academic Realism that was in vogue at the dawn of the century, to expressionistic ink and gouache works on paper by artists propagating a humanist message, to sculpture grounded in the precepts of European Modernism but inspired by Indian Classical traditions, these works reflect a quest for individuality and represent the breadth and depth of talent and genius in Bengal artists of the twentieth century.

The paintings of Hemen Mazumdar and J. P. Gangooly were rooted in European Academic Realism of the late nineteenth century; the former a skilled portraitist and the latter one of the most feted and exhibited 'Indian salon' artists of his day. Hemen's portrait of a winsome beauty lost in a reverie and Gangooly's ethereal dusk landscape are both tinged with Romanticism that was popular at the time.

This European salon art tradition was firmly rejected by the Bengal School whose aim was to devise an indigenous language of pan-Asianism propelled by Nationalist and anti-Imperialist ideals. The Bengal School artists and their successors were also motivated by a desire to create greater awareness of the trials and tribulations of the toiling masses who constituted the backbone of the nation. As such they often used rural, quotidian themes as subjects in their works.

The deft use of ink and watercolor to create form and movement became the trademark associated with this genre although individual artists brought their own sensibilities to bear on their creations. Sailoz Mookherjea's bold lines encase colors which seem to move with an organic rhythm of their own while Gopal Ghose's Impressionistic rendering of a Santhal woman at sunset bears a serene, meditative quality. Ram Kinkar Baij and Meera Mukherjee, both brilliant experimental sculptors, sought to depict the heroism of ordinary folk in their everyday lives. The dynamic lines of Ram Kinkar's sketches breathe life into his subjects while Meera's works bear a gentle, fluid Expressionism.

The primary aim of the Calcutta Painters Group (est. 1953) and later the Society of Contemporary Artists (est. 1960) was to capture the dynamic of a society in transition during the post-Colonial era. Individual styles varied considerably. Bold Expressionism characterizes the works of Nikhil Biswas and Sunil Das. Their paintings are imbued with a sense of speed and movement that seems to reflect the turbulence of the contemporary social and political milieu. Shyamal Dutta Ray and Ganesh Pyne on the other hand embraced the exacting medium of tempera to voice their reflections on the ephemeral nature of existence while Bikash Bhattacharjee developed a unique surrealist vocabulary to create a layered and nuanced portrayal of life in Calcutta as it unfolded around him.

Whatever their intellectual or political predilections might be, a quest for originality characterizes the works of all these artists. Sculptors Chintamani Kar and Prodosh Dasgupta, both trained in western Modernism devised their own artistic language as an amalgam of East and West. Chintamani's seated girl displays a perfect balance of positive and negative space while the articulation of Prodosh's mother and child is reminiscent of the volume and mass of Maurya and Shunga sculptures. Similarly the works of Jogen Chowdhury, Ganesh Haloi and Lalu Prasad Shaw reflect their inner musings and experimentation with style and form.

Above all these works are bound together by power, expressiveness and emotion in their conception and execution. Nearly a century ago the Art of Bengal transcended barriers to celebrate humanism and to voice the ideas of freedom and liberation, ideals which continue to remain inspirational to this day.

Anuradha Ghosh Mazumdar, Head of Department