PRODOSH DAS GUPTA | Remorse of an Egg

New Delhi, Gallery Gita, Prodosh Das Gupta, 1970
Bombay, Taj Art Gallery, Prodosh Das Gupta, 1971
New Delhi, Lalit Kala Akademi, Contours and Volumes, 31 March - 13 April 2012

P. Das Gupta, My Sculpture: Prodosh Das Gupta, Oxford Book & Stationery Co., Calcutta and New Delhi, 1955, pl. 35 and 36 
V. K. Jain, Prodosh Das Gupta: Sculptures & Drawings, Kumar Gallery (P) Ltd., New Delhi, 2008, illustration p. 83 (bronze version)
P. Daw (ed.), Essays on Art by Prodosh Dasgupta, West Bengal Bangla Academy, Calcutta, 2009, p. 159 
S. Mazumdar (ed.), Prodosh Das Gupta, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2012, illustration p. 88 

Very light scratches are present on the surface and base of the sculpture. Irregularities to the surface of the marble, inherent to the medium and commensurate with age. The sculpture is in very good overall condition, as viewed.
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"Egg is the embryonic stage of life. I visualised the theme in egg form in the womb of a white marble block to be hewn out and released into this world of woe and misery, corruption and deceit. The man in the egg is remorseful as though in anticipation of the wretched state of affairs awaiting him in the world. To me the man in the egg is a symbolic interpretation of modern life. In this ovoid form of the egg I have but cut away here and there slightly keeping the egg form almost intact. The different limbs of the figure are also shaped in this ovoid form as though several eggs of different dimensions have been arranged into a larger one. Though the form here has been abstracted to a large extent, the theme or the content has not been lost sight of. I have tried to integrate the content with the ovoid form." (P. Das Gupta quoted in P. Das Gupta, My Sculpture: Prodosh Das Gupta, Oxford Book & Stationery Co., Calcutta and New Delhi, 1955, pp. 32-33) Prodosh Das Gupta’s beautiful Remorse of an Egg, executed in 1948, is from a decisive period in the sculptor's career. Das Gupta was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1912. After studying sculpture in Madras under D. P. Roy Choudhury, he joined the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1937 on the Guru Prasanna Ghose Travelling Scholarship from Calcutta University. Following two years in London, he went on to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. He returned to India in 1940 and spent the next chapter of his artistic career depicting the horrors of the Second World War and the Bengal Famine of 1943. The pivotal phase of Das Gupta's career was to follow a few years later, between 1946 and 1950.

During this period, Das Gupta began to emancipate himself from the academic practices that were entrenched in his artistic habits. The sculptor was greatly inspired by the great Western sculptors, namely Jean Arp, Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brâncusi and Henry Moore, in whose works Das Gupta recognised 'the essentials of Indian sculpture, manifested within their fluid rhthym and gliding forms'. (A. Bhowmick, 'An Artist of the Indian Renaissance', V. K Jain (ed.), Prodosh Das Gupta: Sculptures & Drawings, Kumar Gallery, New Delhi, 2008, p. 26). Das Gupta constantly experimented with presenting tradition in its most contemporary form. What emerged from this fusing of tradition with modernity was one of the most noteworthy contributions to the aesthetic and ideological development of 20th century Indian sculpture. 

In Das Gupta's Remorse of an Egg, one sees the distension, movement and energy essential to Indian sculpture. He has used the fluid and swelling rhythm of white marble to create an organic and vital form. The durability of the marble has left Das Gupta's "man in the egg" suspended in time, an enduring symbol of the sculptor's psychologically engaging life’s work.