Page 300 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

FIRST GENERATION ARTIST 297

instead of romantic moods and emotions. This changing consciousness beginning in
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his student life was probably particularly due to the changed circumstances of the Art
School in those times. For instance, the joining of Mukul Dey as the Principal of the
Art School in 1928 was itself an unthinkable event, contrary to accepted tradition. He
was at the same time the first Indian Principal of that School, also as an artist he was
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closely connected to the Bengal School which had different opinions about the method
of education from that of the Art School. Within a very short time after joining the Art
School he organized an exhibition in the School premises of the paintings of Jamini
Roy (1929) executed in the style of folk art, furthermore, an exhibition of the startling
paintings of Rabindranath (1932) which were free from all kinds of traditions or
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styles. Even in the present age they put forward a question for the need for institutional
art education. Thus, with justifiable reasons, it is presumed that ‘enlightened by his
proximity to Rabindranath and Nandalal, Mukul Dey was sufficiently well informed
about western modernism as a result of his stay in Europe. There occurred an
integration in his artistic consciousness between his native land and the world. That
ideal also inspired Zainul.’ [Trans.] It was perhaps due to this reason that even after
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he achieved extraordinary facility, Zainul was not seen to follow any of the great
painters of the academic method. Among Zainul’s teachers in the Art School,
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Ramendranath Chakravorty had received his education from Santiniketan’s Kala
Bhavana, Kolkata’s Art School and the Slade School of London. Although another
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teacher, Manindra Bhushan Gupta was a teacher of painting he was also a scholar and
an accomplished writer on the history and theory of art. From him the students could
learn extensively about the various movements of modern art in Europe. 47 The
proximity of these two teachers also helped the conscious students of the Art School
to be enlightened by the contemporary sensibility. 48
Although those who came from Santiniketan as teachers of the Calcutta Art School
were either directly or indirectly close to the school of Abanindranath, they also had
the opportunity to be moved by the consciousness of contemporary world art during
their period of education in Santiniketan. There they broke the bondage of the illusion
of epics-puranas-history of the ideal of Abanindranath and turned their eyes in the
direction of the life pulsing all around them because of the teacher inspired by the
ideal of Rabindranath and Nandalal Bose. 49 Moreover, they also began to get
acquainted with the new streams of the west through the series of lectures delivered
by the renowned art theorist Stella Kramrisch who had come at the invitation of
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Rabindranath and through learning oil painting and woodcut of an expressionist type
from the artist inspired by the French post-impressionist ideal, Andre Karpelles. 51
In the etchings that Mukul Dey and Ramendranath Chakravorty were producing
alongside their work as teachers in the Calcutta Art School, actual scenes of rural
Bengal ‘became manifest in fine lines.’ [Trans.] That the subjective encouragement of
those pictures by Mukul Dey and Ramendranath also influenced Zainul, can be stated
without any doubt. For, Zainul had also learned printmaking from Ramendranath
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Chakravorty and Mukul Dey regularly looked into his sketch books. Moreover, at
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