Page 51 - Art and Crafts of Bangladesh

48 ART AND CRAFTS

Debdas Chakraborty’s early experimental
artworks display in semi-real and semi-abstract
form, human figures, processions, gathering of
people, female face, female figure etc. Political
awareness and direct contact with politics are the
key sources of these subjects. He wants to turn
the human figure into a source of resistance. With
this joined, on one hand, his personal wounds and
the damages suffered by this country, and on the
other, the intense materialism of his subconscious
mind. Thus, in these paintings he reflects the
presence of heartbreaking feelings of sorrow and
the urge to resist which is present in human life as
well as his profound thirst for life and the
joyousness of his inner being. In his second stage,
Debdas Chakraborty’s journey, like his
contemporaries, went beyond reality and towards
the Abstract Expressionist trend (pl 1.15).
However, in this case he followed his emotions
more then his intellect or ideas. The paintings of
fig. 1.29 Nitun Kundu, this stage display the six seasons, rainfall, urban structures and other indications of
Festival-1, oil, 1990 visible nature. He is a bit different from his contemporaries in terms of the use of
colors. In contrast to the delicate and harmonized colors used by others, his works
display a tendency to use intense and frenzied colors. With this he added little displays
of ornamentation that makes his pictorial surface rich and charming.
Syed Jahangir became particularly proficient in watercolor as a student and in the early
stages after finishing his studenthood; the favorite subjects of his watercolors were
landscape and the tribal life in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Later on he became inclined
towards oil painting and abstraction, much like his contemporaries. Pebble and
diamond forms were scattered all over the canvas in his early phase of abstraction,
which may have been the reflection of life’s constant state of motion. In later stages,
his art became much more driven by philosophy, eagerly asking questions about life
and the universe. Titles like Atmar Ujjeeban (Regeneration of the soul), Ajanar
Anyeshay (In search of the unknown) are manifestations of this urge. He wanted to
capture the unknown mystery of the universe on his canvas in bright, splendid colors
and through forms that give the hint of sky, horizon etc. or suggestively represent the
glow of colors and the magnificent display of light at sunset. Sometimes he creates this
unworldly space through the flash of a shining ribbon like line in infinitely extending
space (pl. 1.17). He has again started to place worldly objects and subject matter on the
canvas in recent times. Although, in representation, they are almost close to abstraction,
it seems that Syed Jahangir may be involved in a study to enter a new stage.