Jamini Roy: A painter who revisited the roots by Anuradha Ghosh
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Special books on India 75 years of independence celebration - Series 5
Special books on India 75 years of independence celebration - Series 5
To celebrate Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav, 75th years of India’s independence several organizations, groups are celebrating the historic year throughout various cultural events. Eminent publisher, NIYOGI Books brought eight different titles to celebrate the moment with a remarkable attempt.
Jamini Roy: A painter who revisited the roots
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Author: Anuradha Ghosh
INR-299, PB, ISBN-13: 978-93-91125-36-3
The book explores the remarkable career of the maestro right from the late 1910s till his very last days. It closely examines not only the steep bends of Roy’s art that culminated in his signature style, but also the very process through which he reconnected with his indigenous rootedness that later became the very bedrock of his more famous works. It engages in detail with the influence that the various forms of folk art wielded over him—not only the painted scrolls of indigenous patuas or the distinctive Kalighat pats, but also the temple murals of Bankura, terracotta figurines, floor art, even folk songs, dances and rituals—something that nourished and nurtured his identity. However, Roy’s located identity was mediated by the contemporary Modernist idiom, and the elements in his uniquely Bengal-based visual narratives are underpinned by a conscious intention to simplify, abbreviate, and thus reveal the essential, ‘significant’ form. It also addresses the plural lines of conflicts that underlie the very making of his art— between the urban and the rural, local and the global.
Told in a simple and engaging mode, the book explores the multiple facets of a man for whom art was both a livelihood and a meditative journey, and follows his life of disciplined simplicity along with his quirks and idiosyncrasies.
Anuradha Ghosh
Anuradha Ghosh is Associate Professor in English at Dinabandhu Andrews College,
Kolkata. After graduating from Presidency College, she was a journalist with Business
Standard and Ananda Bazar Patrika, before joining her present position in 1996.
Her publications include Kothay Kothay Jai (1993), a co-authored volume of Bangla
poems; Bonbungalowr Nijer Jibon (2010), a volume of Bangla poems; Myths,
Skyborne (2012), a collection of her English translation of Tariq Sujat’s poetry; and Memory Unfolds (2009), a monograph on the artist Samindranath Majumdar. Her co-authored volume The Great Journey of Shapes: Collages of Nandalal Bose (2015) is the first-ever close analysis of the collages of the celebrated artist. Her latest book was Hemendranath
Mazumdar (2016). She has spoken and written extensively on art and aesthetics and cultural
studies.
She had served as Convenor of English at The Expert Committee on School Education, West Bengal, and had been instrumental in designing the English syllabus of the government and semi-government schools of the entire state.
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