Jogen Chowdhury

Acquired by the present owner's father between 1979-1981.

Sao Paulo Biennale, 1979

paper laid down on wood, light layer of varnish, minor undulations to paper surface that are inherent, minor inherent surface scuffs visible in catalogue illustration, nail heads from wood visible under certain lighting conditions, overall stable and in good condition
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Jogen Chowdhury avoided the imitation of the European and Bengal schools and strove instead to invent his own idiom. In 1965 Jogen went to Paris on a French Government scholarship. On his return to India he became concerned that as an artist there was 'nothing left to do'. In the artists own words 'What I felt quite strongly about was the need to create something new and original something which could not be accomplished either by replication of Western Art or by falling back on Indian art, in other words, on ancient India and its heritage alone... The other idea that struck me was that it was my own characteristics that would define and determine my art and its conventions. My memories, my dreams, my thoughts, my environment - they could all become subjects of my works.' (Jogen Chowdhury, Jogen Chowdhury, Enigmatic Visions, Glenbarra Art Museum, 2005, p.28).

In the current work Jogen's sinuous fluid line and simplification of form is derived from his appreciation of the Bengal pat tradition. 'The sheer range of characters, temperaments and manners that I observed in the people that I saw around myself fascinated me. I portrayed them from an essentially personal perspective. In my characterisation of these people, I crossed the bounds of realistic representation and let imagination take over.' (ibid, p.31).

Between 1968-76 Jogen produced a series of works titled Reminiscences of a Dream, where symbols and figures from a world of dreams float against a dark background that are devoid of time and place. The absence of a background allows the viewer to focus purely on the central character, evoking a sense of human alienation. His figures are woven into a shape with a spidery web of dense cross hatched lines, fleshed out with a hint of colour added with a soft dry pastel.  'We did not have electricity in our house and I had to read by the hurricane lantern. I had to fall back on black and white because we did not have enough light...We had a miserable state of living when we came to Kolkata as refugees...The criss-crossing lines, too, may be carrying traces of the environmental and mental complications of that time.' ("About my Painting" by Jogen Chowdhury, ibid, p.52).

His distinctive use of cross-hatching and the black ground continued throughout the artist's career. In 1972, Jogen moved to Delhi where he became the curator of paintings at the Rashtrapati Bhavan at the President's Estate. The artist comments on his works from this period 'I extended the range of my subjects but technical mode remained almost unchanged. I was still seeking to realise the subject of the picture from numerous criss-crossing lines in pen-and-ink on paper. I had, of course, by then started using oil pastels more frequently. The size of the works grew larger, and I was able to paint quite a few significant works in this period.' (ibid, p.30)

The current work  beautifully illustrates Jogen's sensitivity and awareness of pattern and texture that probably came from his training and work as a textile designer at the Weavers' Service Centre in Chennai during the late 1960s.  '...I have always been fascinated by the conventional forms of a sari draping around a woman's body, and I have sought through that image, forms of my own making, in a new manner.("About my painting" by Jogen Chowdhury, ibid p.32) Life 1 painted just after his arrival to Delhi in the early 1970s 'grew out of something quite funny. A pile of bedclothes and pillows were lying in a mess in a corner of the small room on the terrace that my wife, Shipra, and I had rented in South Delhi... There was something strongly sensual about the accumulation of the layers of bed sheets and the side pillow.' (ibid, p.30)

'There is a pervasive sensuality in Jogen's work, eroticism breathing from every pore... softly as a relaxed breath...thin and fine lines, seen against a dream screen of darkness, is the furthest he gets towards evoking romanticized eroticism. A romantic longing that turns everything it touches light, pure and ethereal. ("Jogen Chowdhury: Lyric and Enigmatic Visions" essay by R. Siva Kumar, ibid, p.10).