Jogen Chowdhury Retrospective 1939-2016 - Exhibition will take place from Feb 17th till March 20th.
Panel Discussion: Ashrafi Bhagat, Soumik Majumdar, Jogen Chowdhruy.
Opening Reception: Wednesday, 17 February 2016, 6.30 pm
A retrospective show of various kinds of works covering the large time spectrum over fifty years from the early days till now certainly unfolds not only the trials and achievements but also the decisive moments and turning points in the career of one of the most celebrated and prolific artists of our times, Jogen Chowdhury. Truly, the viewers get a chance to witness this long and rich journey that commenced from late 50s when Jogen Chowdhury was a young tenderfoot in the world of art, with eyes full of dreams and fortitudes. For the artist concerned too it is an opportunity to rewind back, to replay the time, as it were, and to relive those moments which shaped him as an artist and drove him to work with an exceptional passion and vision.
Born in 1939, in an East Bengal village, now in Bangladesh, Jogen Chowdhuty right from childhood experienced a life troubled with the aftermath of Partition, displacement from a comfortable homeland and a difficult upbringing in a Kolkata refugee settlement. He lived and experienced the most transformative phase of modern Indian history i.e. 1940s and passing through the trauma and significant social changes he worked his way, along with others, through the following decades to reshape the history of modern Indian art in remarkable ways. Artistically gifted and determined, he complet ed his art education from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta in 1960 with highest credits. He went to Paris on a Cultural Exchange Scholarship for higher education at the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux Arts and the Atelier-17 In 1965. He worked as a textile designer with the Weavers’ Service Centre, Chennai (1968 - 1972) and then as a Curator of the Art Collection of Rashtrapati Bhavana, New Delhi (1972 - 1987). Finally he moved to Santiniketan as a teacher in the Painting Department, Kala Bhavana (1987). He formally retired as the Professor and Principal of Kala Bhavana in (1999) to devote full time to art and related activities. As an Emeritus Professor he is still attached to the college closely and carries on with his work actively.
Jpgen Chowdhury’s personal style can be understood as a natural consequence of his own affinity with the organic energies of life manifested in nature and an incisive observation of life around. Even the pitch dark background or the sagging people with distinctive facial features or female figures with disturbing scars on their bodies have direct or oblique references to his own traumatic experiences of life around. These references make his works edgy and expressionistic often bordering on social and political satire. Through the caricature-like look of many of his figures Jogen does ridicule the corrupt and fraudulent characters he encounters in various social circuits. It is from the same stylistic mode that he can endow his images with erotic underpinnings as well. The apparent charm in his drawings, the linear insinuations certainly lead to a quality of elegance; at the same time it also leads to a sense of anguish and discomposure superseding the comeliness and visual enchantment. Sooner or later the viewer realizes that what one is discreetly drawn to a certain kind of enigma, a deep-seated agony built into the process of his working. The intensity with which Jpgen works it out is directly connected to his personal engagement with life and his quest for a viable mode of expression.
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