Page 32 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

PAINTING 29

areas of light and shade in architectural and interior settings in a personal style which
showed some resemblance with Cubism. He attempted also to portray mythological
and spiritual themes in terms of form and light and shade which sometimes came very
close to abstraction. Gaganendranath could rightly be termed as the pioneer of
modernistic ideas in the history of Indian art (pl.1.7).
It was a revolutionary decision on the part of Jamini Roy when he decided in 1921 to
abandon his dexterity in the naturalistic craftsmanship of the west and employed himself
to the pursuit of a new language of art taking inspiration from the folk art of the rural
people. Although the aesthetic qualities of folk art were not completely ignored, not
many artists had thought of applying it to institutionalized high art at that time. Hence,
Jamini Roy pioneered a fresh artistic expression in Indian art. He abandoned the practice
of achieving tactile quality with the application of a three-dimensional rendering,
perspective and light and shade and accepted the folk way of treating the surface in a
two-dimensional pattern, application of color in a tone-less flatness and the use of a
flowing outline. He succeeded in creating a new art, sophisticated and well-balance,
using the matrixes of the folk art which expressed a fresh and simple beauty and retained
the Indian characteristics as well (pl.1.8).
Although Rabindranath Tagore started to show his artistic traits from the 1920s, he
emerged as one of the major contributors in shaping modern Indian art from the 1930s.
One can feel the succession of Bengali and Indian traditions in almost all the prose and
poetic creations of Rabindranath Tagore. However, his paintings did not admit any
such debt. Rabindranath’s paintings could only be termed as individualistic products
of an extraordinarily creative and imaginative mind. His extensive tours abroad and
thus his acquaintance with contemporary world art and its diverse expressions could
well be one reason for this. Nevertheless, he succeeded in accumulating them all and
transforming them into a very personal style which was at the same time local and
universal. His paintings display expressions of a mysterious and primitive inner force
and an enigmatic twilight zone of the human psyche (fig.1.13, pl.1.9).
7. The Modernistic Ventures
The imminent threats of a world war and a great economic depression prompted a rise fig. 1.14 Mukul Dey,
and extension of progressive political thoughts and social awareness among the Drawing the Net,
intellectuals and artistic community of Bengal in the 1930s. Artists began to abandon drypoint, 1934
the traditional themes based on religion,
myth and history and instead became
interested in depicting contemporary
scenes from the real society around
them. These endeavors gave birth to
such artists’ groups as the ‘Young Artists
Union’ (1931) and the ‘Art Rebel
Centre’ (1933) and members of them
painted in the naturalistic way but in a