Description
About the artist:
Jogen Chowdhury has been widely acknowledged to be, the master of the unbroken line. His lines are emotive and used to express and suggest the character of a person. This is done by, distorting the form without breaking the line and in the world of young, contemporary art, distortion has been Jogen Chowdhury’s most significant impact. The power and beauty of his technique and line is this play between the known and unknown. In Chowdhury’s work, the figure is always in the foreground, it is primary, it conveys everything. He uses colour to give volume to his figures and the fluidity of his lines bring a sensual aspect to his forms.
Chowdhury is fascinated by history. Having experienced the traumatic effects of the Partition, dislocation and a sense of isolation, his figures reflect an intractable solitude. Even when he paints a couple, the two are detached and distant from each other. His individual figures are usually more sensuous – the woman caressing herself, if a man, then curled in pain with raw wounds on his body. His imagery is organic and emerge as protuberances or growths from within. Chowdhury’s works are also social and political comments; he either protests or sublimates the injuries to or of the human condition. Jogen Chowdhury’s ability to juxtapose contrary emotions, the real and imaginary and the known and unknown, make his art not only a form of self expression but a reflection, of a collective and subjective consciousness.
Jogen was born in Daharpara Village in Bangladesh in 1939. He graduated from the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata in 1960. He went to Paris to study in Ecole des Beaux Arts, in William Hayter’s Atelier 17 (1965). Later, he spent five months in London. He returned to India in early 1968. In 1987, Chowdhury joined Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan as professor of painting.
Chowdhury has won several awards including the Prix le France de la Jeune Peinture, Paris (1966), 2nd Biennale of Havana, Cuba (1986), International Print Biennale, Bhopal (1995), Kalidas Samman by the Government of Madhya Pradesh, (2001) and Banga Bibhushan award by the Government of West Bengal (2012).
He lives and works in Santiniketan / Kolkata.
