Thursday 15 May 2014




 

Drawing-12

An old drawing

A charcoal drawing..

Nilotpal Sinha  Untitled  Charcoal on paper  20" x 30"  1990
Nilotpal Sinha      Untitled      Charcoal on paper      20″ x 30″      1990

 

Drawing-11

An old drawing

An old pastel and ink drawing

Few mixed media series works on paper I did around in 1995 which one I place here as a cropped image. This is also a mixed media layout for a bigger canvas work but that was not finished at all. I was then much interested to work with pastels dry or oil etc., on the ink drawing, specifically which was fountain ink and I got some pleasure for this work in the name of  ‘The dance of ghosts’

Nilotpal Sinha  The dance of ghosts  Oil pastel and ink on paper  Size unknown   1995
Nilotpal Sinha     The dance of ghosts     Oil pastel and ink on paper     Size unknown    1995


 

Drawing-10

An old drawing

A charcoal drawing…

Few charcoal drawings I did in between 1995 to 1997 that were mostly layouts to draw on large-sized canvas or paper pasted on cloth. This small drawing was made ready for that purpose and most of them had been disposed except two or three large drawings.

Nilotpal Sinha   Untitled   Charcoal on paper   12" x 14"(app.)   Year-unknown
Nilotpal Sinha     Untitled     Charcoal on paper     12″ x 14″ (app.)     Year-unknown


Painting

To the readers

Digital painting

Nilotpal Sinha  Acid rain   Digital painting   24" x 24"   2007
Nilotpal Sinha     Acid rain     Digital painting on flex    24″ x 24″     2007

 

 

Wednesday 14 May 2014

A looking back, an early start up(17)

An old artwork

The death of a family, a suicide committed by the society

This painting was my most engaging acrylic work that I did in 1991 and I exhibited it in my first solo show at AFA, Kolkata in 1991. After the finishing of my diploma in visual art program in 1983-84, I was commonly influenced by the western modernist trends during the eighteenth to nineteenth century art practice by the modern masters in Europe and that influence guided me to generate few works that related to the different social happenings by the innocent country people of our homeland. Particularly this incidence, the death of a family was one of the most important news to me in the days of late eighty’s.

One fine morning when I was reading a Kolkata based popular Bengali news paper, it reported in few lines that a factory labour family had committed a suicide being electrified with the wrapping wires which was directly connected to the switched on electric plug point and probably this incidence happened because of a mental depression that related to the common industrial problems such as lock out, closure or strike. After reading this shocking news I became perplexed for few seconds and I thought it that the members of an ordinary labour family who were fallen in a crisis, feeling unhappiness during a long period, had lost their hope to survive for the days in future. Also I astonished because a labour family members had decided to commit a suicide while the local government upholding to the socialistic ideas based on a doctrine on class less society that was guided by the left front oriented people’s political parties, the leadership of the trade union movements, at the same time the society’s attitude to indifference, the so-called progressive men and women’s attitude based on humanitarian ground could not protect the family members from this kind of pathetic incidence. That intolerable true and tormented situation made me conscious to realize the fact what was focussed to me as an hypocrisy of the surroundings! I could also feel a responsibility too that should be committed by me and  I decided at once to go through my creative process for painting on canvas all along on this current issue if that would not be helpful to make this contextual narrative condition other than otherwise I had no option to generate this painting. The tendency of formal expressions on agony of death and the visual composition, sign and symbols of electrification and conductivity explored the narrative style, the narratives was the main implemented source of visual language.

Art critic wrote in review “The most engaging exhibit of the show, The Death of a Family, is handled with free use of space and no tense tones or bristly texture in colours while the central focus of the image is the figures writhing in death pain, the formal and compositional management takes care to render every part of the picture meaningfully vivid and achieves a satisfying pictorial unity.”–Manasij Majumder, The Telegraph (published from Kolkata).

One of my senior friend, philosopher and guide Babuda (Debiprasad Basu, by profession he is a writer), liked this painting very much and he said several times, ” …this painting becomes reference in context to the suicide,  if I get any chance I must mention it as reference in my critical analysis in future .”

Nilotpal Sinha    The death of a family    Acrylic on canvas     60" x 72" (app.)    1991
Nilotpal Sinha     The death of a family    Acrylic on canvas     60″ x 72″ (app.)    1991


 

 

A looking back, an early start up(16)

An old artwork

Digitally processed pastel work

This old pastel work on paper was drawn in 1991 that I have processed this year (2013) in digital method, truly which is a single click operation. I exhibited that old version in one of my solo show at Academy of fine arts, Kolkata, in 1991.

At that time an artist cum tourist from UK was visiting Kolkata and by chance he was in AFA to view the running shows in different galleries. He visited my gallery remaining long time to discuss on the current topics of art. He questioned me more but I could give answers little. When he was ready for getting out of my show he told me that he liked this form of artwork and he already started oil painting following a long trend and treatment of traditional cartooning to meet a goal in art language practice. Naturally I was become surprised very much and I got an encouragement for future practice.

Nilotpal Sinha  Peoples in the park  Dry pastel  30" x 20" (app.)  1991
Nilotpal Sinha     Peoples in the park     Dry pastel     30″ x 20″ (app.)     1991


 




 



 

Monday 12 May 2014

The Great Master of Bengal School

A birthday of the great master 


Bharat Mata (Mother India) by Abanindranath Thakur
Bharat Mata (Mother India) by Abanindranath Thakur


142nd Birthday of Abanindranath Thakur

Our tribute to the Great Master

Atmasanskritirbarb Shilpani..” (Art is to cultivate one’s own soul) — a Sloka (Sanskrit verse).


Aban ThakurWednesday (7th Aug, 2013) was the 142nd Birthday of Abanindranath Thakur (7th August, 1871 – 5th December, 1951), the  great master of  Bengal school of art. He was born in famous Tagore family at Jorasnako in Kolkata who played a master role as the pillar and pioneer artist in modern phase of Indian art. He was a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore and known as Aban Thakur in short form. Rabindranath called him Obin.

He had contributed to establish the Bengal school of art after the emergence of Company School and Kalighat Painting and major writings on the literature and art such as Buro Angla (The old Angla), the “Bageshwaree Probondhabali” (Essays on Bageshwaree) is most, the famous series of lectures delivered by Abanindranath in Calcutta University in 1921-1929 as a “Bageshwaree Adhyapak” (Prof. of the Post Bageshwaree) that contained a critical and aesthetical discussions which partly based on “Sarongo” (Six Parts) and “Navarasa” - Nine-Rasa of ancient Indian art and aesthetics).

Besides, he was deeply familiar with the various kind of Asiatic regions and its culture, especially the Mughal and Rajput miniature paintings that inspired him to invent his well-known wash technique in water-color; at the same time probably this eclectic paradigm had also adopted the western water-color technique as because Aban Thakur studied in Calcutta School of Art to learn to use pastel under Italian artist O. Ghilardi, oil painting from Charles Palmer. Not only that, he devoted to create playfully so many miniature sculptures or toys that called Katum Kutum (actually pronounced as Kaatoom Kootoom) attracted viewers vigorously generation after generation. Also he collected to research so many short poems or rhymes on house hold rituals (Broto) for female and wrote stories for children.

Artist Nandalal Bose, Asit Kumar Haldar, Surendranath Ganguly, Mukul Dey, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Kalipada Ghoshal, Sarada Ukil, Samarendranath Gupta, K. Venkatappa and Ranada Ukil were his close students.

According to Wikipedia this is noted that “Abanindranath maintained throughout his life a long friendship with the London-based artist, author, and eventual president of London’s Royal College of Art William Rothenstein.” ……. ” With the success of Tagore’s ideas, he came into contact with other Asian cultural figures, such as the Japanese art historian Okakura Kakuzō and the Japanese painter Yokoyama Taikan, whose work was comparable to his own. In his later work, he began to incorporate elements of Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his art, seeking to construct a model for a modern pan-Asian artistic tradition which would merge the common aspects of Eastern spiritual and artistic culture.”

He was the favourite disciple of  E. B. Havell who changed the course foundation of Calcutta school of art, from western style of painting to Indian style of painting and it is well-known in art history because Havell was so much keen interested in temple sculptures, wall paintings of Ajanta and Bagh caves of ancient India even the court art of Mughal period including the different kind of flowing traditional trends of marginal art in remote areas of Indian people that played an important role to influence not only the thinking of Aban Thakur’s mind also to build a nationalistic view-point to the mind of artists, intellectuals also to common people though Abanindranath was much aware before a meet with Havell. For that reason Aban Thakur painted his most significant iconic figure of Bharat Mata (Mother India) that is mentioned as reference to highlight the importance in art history with a special attention when the art historians discussed on this topic, the role of modern indian art of late 19th to early 20th century in context to the anti imperialistic political movements that was the national freedom fighting.


And that’s why the image of this vigorous genius artist Abanindranath Thakur is well appreciated still today from older age group to younger group of artists. If you need more about Aban Thakur please go to  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abanindranath_Tagore

Photo creditCollected from Wikipedia
Abanindranath Tegore The Great Master of Bengal School   Photo cedit : Collected from Facebook
Abanindranath Tagore (7th August, 1871-5th December, 1951)
The Great Master of Bengal School      
Photo credit : Collected from Facebook