Life on the wall

A rare collection of Jamini Roy's unseen works is a reflection of the artist's evolution from an academic portraitist to a modernist who gave expression to everyday life of rural Bengal

This is not an exhibition of artworks for Uma Jain, but it is a showcase of memories, of legacies. As her gallery - Dhoomimal - turns 80, she is presenting a canvas of bonds formed by the Jains over decades with artists and critics - one of the closest being with noted Modernist Jamini Roy.

It is only apt, then, that the year-long celebrations kickstart with "Carved Contours", which features 80 drawings and paintings by Roy - some of which have never been seen by the public before. "This collection of Roy was collected over a period of time and belonged to my father-in-law, Ram Babu, and then to my husband, Ravi," says Jain.

She recalls a time when the relationship between artists and gallerists wasn't so cut and dried and camaraderie mattered - unlike today, when it's mostly about "targets" and " commissions". "The gallery was a meeting place for artists like J Swaminathan, F N Souza, Ram Kumar and Manu Parekh. Some, like Roy, Sailoz Mukherjea, Sushil Sarkar and critic A S Raman, were very close to Ram Babu. They sat over tea at Wenger's and discussed how to promote art and artists," she says.

Roy had already died when Jain got married into the family. Such was the bond between the Roys and the Jains that one of the first trips she undertook with Ram Babu and her husband was to Santiniketan to visit the family.

The show has been divided into two parts: a set of coloured works and a set of pen and ink drawings. "There are around 50 drawings, which have never been presented before like this," says art scholar-columnist Uma Nair, who has curated the exhibition. "When I first saw them, they were all contained in a folder." She had the works framed identically to form a grid on the wall.

These drawings highlight Roy's modernity even as they take one back to a childhood spent in Bankura surrounded by the Bauls, potters and Santhals.

 

The paintings section showcases Roy's evolution from an academic painter who had just returned from the West to someone who developed his own insignia by presenting the lives of the people of rural Bengal. "Out of the simplicity of life's leanings in the lives of the Santhals were born his Christ figures, his Last Supper rhythms and his Indianesque Madonnas," writes Nair in a 110-page book brought out by the gallery.

A collection of coloured works

His preference for a palette of seven colours - Indian red, yellow, ochre, cadmium green, vermillion, grey and blue - prepared from materials such as hingul, harital, kak khori and limestone can be seen in all its glory in the Krishna Balram Gopini and the mother-and-child series. "He spent nearly 20 years studying the mother-and-child theme," says Nair. One can see an early depiction of the theme in a Santhal woman clad in a yellow sari. "Contrast that with a later work in which a woman is wearing a white sari. I love the way the sari falls in his works - demure and graceful," she says. "His women figures are a delight. They are shown as either mothers or devotees, be it the gopini or pujarin. In a subtle way, he has shown us the difference between sensuous, which is momentary, and sensual, which lives on forever. Also, his depictions of the Santhal women emphasise inclusion of the marginalised," she adds.

 

It is no wonder, then, that the mother-and-child works are a collector's delight. "One of my favourite Jamini paintings is from the minimalist phase. It is a 'mother' that is conceptualised in six strokes… After a lifetime devoted to painting the mother and child comes this tour de force of simplicity. The child is merely suggested and a perfect balance is achieved between the two figures," wrote Nirmalya Kumar in an essay in Re-imagine: India-UK Cultural Relations in 21st Century. Kumar is one of the largest collectors of Roy's works in the world. "He solved the problem of how to be a truly Indian artist," she says. "He was not just Indian in the choice of subjects like Raja Ravi Varma was but also in style and conceptualisation."

"Carved Contours" will be on display at Dhoomimal Gallery, Connaught Place, New Delhi, till March 10