This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. Please remove or replace such wording and instead of making proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance.(December 2018) ( Learn how and when to remove this message )
Jahar Dasgupta's childhood was spent in Jamshedpur where at the young age, he would draw elephants, dogs, and trees on the floor. Later, his family moved to Dhanbad due to his father, Mr. Narendranath Dasgupta, who worked at TISCO in an executive post and left the job to join the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research institute as a scientist. At the age of 9, he drew the face of Stalin and Ma Sarada Devi on a wall. This took the attention of his parents, and as a result, they decided to send him to an art school. In 1960, he was admitted to Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan, which was founded by Rabindranath Tagore. This was a substantial turning point in his life. In Kala Bhavana, he took his primary lessons under mentors like Nand Lal Bose, Ramkinkar Baiz and Benode Behari Mukherjee. In 1964, he obtained a diploma from Kala Bhavana.
His first job was as an art teacher at a non-Bengali school in North Calcutta where he served for many years. In his struggling time, he also took many art tuitions to support his family. Simultaneously, he continued to regularly participate in art shows.
Dasgupta had developed his individual style in his paintings and drawings. Previously, he had painted in oil medium and now mainly works in ink, pastel, and acrylic colour.
His first solo exhibition was organised in Birla Academy. His other solo exhibitions took place in Laxmana Art Gallery, Lalit Kala Academy, Chitrakoot, and the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta. He exhibited his first solo abroad in 2004 at Gallery Hansmania (Norway) and later at Club Bangladesh (Sweden). Dasgupta also participated in many group exhibitions throughout India and abroad, such as Aakriti Art Gallery, Birla Academy, Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta, Jehangir Art Gallery, AIFACS, Kamalnayan Bajaj Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, Nehru Centre, Lokayata Art Gallery, Chemould Art Gallery, Mulk Raj Anand Centre and various other places. His paintings were exhibited in South Korea, London, Paris and Canada. He was invited to NABC in 2010, hosted by Kallol, a non-profit socio-cultural organization of Bengalis, New Jersey. After that, his last solo exhibition was organised by Tagore Society at the 60,000 square metres (6.0 ha) performing arts center located in Marina Bay, Singapore, popularly known as Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay in the year 2011.
1969–1971
In 1969, a total of seven ex-students from Jahar and Baroda Art College, Santiniketan, came together to form a group named Painters' Orchestra, now one of the oldest art groups in India. Since that time, Jahar Dasgupta became a regular participant of this group and their shows, and also went for a few solos as well. His first solo exhibition was organised in Birla Art and Culture Kolkata, West Bengal. He developed his own style of expression since the beginning of 1970s after passing through a period of apprenticeship during the 1960s. In this sense, he may be categorised as an artist of the 1970s.
1971–1980
Starting in the late 1960s and ending in the early 1970s, there was a period of political turmoil. The leftist movement in the fold of CPI(ML) rose to its peak, ushering in deaths and murders at a devastating measure. The Bangladesh liberation war of 1971 also created great commotion. All creative persons were, in some way or another, affected by these incidents. All these social upheavals had a great impact on Jahar's creative self. In this early phase, his paintings often revealed reality in its crudest form. An acrylic canvas of 1994 titled 'Scrap' shows clusters of dilapidated human bodies tied together on a crate being pulled up by a crane.
1981–1999
1975 work 'End of an era' by Jahar Dasgupta
Jahar never tried to hang onto one fixed subject. He experimented with various subjects and styles in different forms and respective times. On one side, 'End of an Era', 'Genocide', 'Waiting for Godo', 'Dark side of Civilization', Series of 'Confrontation', and 'Shelter' are the reflection of anger and crude rebellion. On the other side, through 'Mermaid' series, 'Fall of Radhika' series, 'Eternal Love' series, he touched the chord of beauty ingrained in life. His paintings at that time swung between the two aspects of this duality, ideal and real, good and evil, light and dark.
In this era, Jahar mainly concentrated on nature, animals, and women in his canvases. The drawings were mostly done in monochrome dry pastel. The canvases in acrylic focussed on the various aspects of ideal beauty. The widespread nature of rural Bengal reveals its colourful faces. The natural is transformed into the supernatural. These paintings are narrated as full of life, love, spirit, joy, and fantasy.
Sandip Ray, a young film director from Bengal who filmed Himghar in 1996, met Dasgupta and showed interest for a documentary on the artist. Later, in 2001, he completed the documentary which he called 'Bornomoy Jahar' and screened it at Nandan.
2010–present
An untitled work by Jahar Dasgupta
While attending a talk entitled 'Nadir Bhabna' (Musings of the river) by Shri Alokeranjan Dasgupta, the artist Shri Jahar Dasgupta encountered a mindblowing experience. Acknowledged gratefully by the painter, the interaction opened for him the doors to the world of Bergson and his revolutionary thinking.
This was his very first acquaintance with the philosophy of the French thinker and evolutionist Henri Bergson (1894–1941). The uplifting spiritual content of Bergson enkindled the thought process of the artist. All the present series and solos is a living tale of the journey. In fact he is the first artist to apply the theory of Bergson into fine art. This is a very rare and unconventional thinking by Jahar where he blends the science and art beautifully into his canvas.
Shri Dasgupta's creative impulse is enthused by this Aristollean 'entelechy' – the endowment that gives rise to the potential of the vital force. This by itself becomes the primary movement of the artist's imagination. In his depiction of the teeming world of the humans, the birds and beasts and the minutest of insects, he does not change the outward form. The artist in him understands that every moment is changing and leaving the imprint of its transience on the inner mechanism of the body. There by it creates an abstract form within which in its turn is represented with a candid intensity of the artist.
Dasgupta's recent work on the 'Jesus Christ' series and a huge mural on MADHABI daughter of yayati from Mahabharata is also a notable work from recent times.
Politics
In the 1970s, like many people from art and cultural field in West Bengal, Jahar was among those who attracted to leftist ideologies and was immediately attached to Gananatya Sangha. He stood twice on the Panchayet vote under left wing parties at Madhyamgram North 24 Parganas in 1974 and 1984.
Jahar Dasgupta was the former President of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata where he lives and works. As of now, he has a job as the principal of the Swarsangam-Birla Institute of Visual and Performing Arts.
Related Research Articles
Nandalal Bose was one of the pioneers of modern Indian art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.
Paresh Maity is an Indian painter. He is a prolific painter in a short career span. In 2014, Government of India conferred upon him its fourth-highest civilian award the Padma Shri.
Benode Behari Mukherjee was an Indian artist from West Bengal state. Mukherjee was one of the pioneers of Indian modern art and a key figure of Contextual Modernism. He was one of the earliest artists in modern India to take up to murals as a mode of artistic expression. All his murals depict a subtle understanding of environmental through pioneering architectural nuances.
Narayan Shridhar Bendre was a 20th-century Indian artist and one of the founding members of Baroda Group Narayan Shridhar Bendre was born in Indore. He was known for being landscape artist. In 1992 he was awarded the Padma Bhushan.
Sankho Chaudhuri was an Indian sculptor, and a noted figure in the art scene of India. (Although named Naranarain in due family tradition, he was more widely known by his pet name Sankho). Ram Kinker Baij was his teacher. He began close to cubism and then was influenced by István Beöthy, whom he had met in Paris. His themes have included the female figure and wildlife. He has worked in a wide range of media and produced large-scale reliefs and mobiles.
Kalpathi Ganpathi "K.G." Subramanyan was an Indian artist. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2012.
Hiran Mitra is an Indian artist based in Kolkata. He left his ancestral country home in Kharagpur to study Fine Art in the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata at the age of 14. His paintings are energetic abstract gestural paintings with the choreography of the human body observed from folk dance having influenced his recent calligraphic forms. He has contributed significantly to the visual stimulus in eastern Indian films, television, theatre and literature since in the 1980s. He is also known to have defined a benchmark for book cover design for contemporary Bengali literature. His paintings are statements on the human condition and the twilight zones of reality and time. Bold brush strokes, layered washes and sprays and unconventional use of acrylic and industrial paints characterize his paintings. He is part of the Open Window Artist group and has been part of the Painters 80 Artist group in Kolkata.
Bikash Bhattacharjee was an Indian painter from Kolkata in West Bengal. Through his paintings, he depicted the life of the average middle-class Bengali – their aspirations, superstitions, hypocrisy and corruption, and even the violence that is endemic to Kolkata. He worked in oils, acrylics, water-colours, conté and collage. In 2003, he was awarded the highest award of Lalit Kala Akademi, India's National Academy of Arts, the Lalit Kala Akademi Fellowship.
Chittrovanu Mazumdar is a contemporary Indian artist of Bengali-Indian and French descent. Mazumdar has been described as a "conceptual artist" and a "post-structuralist" while some critics consider it difficult to classify his oeuvre into a single artistic tradition or even into any consistent genre of his own. Mazudmar has referred to himself as an "expressionist painter" but has also said he generally prefers not to use "a particular word to qualify" his work because it comprises different kinds of media and forms, and that art is more interesting when fully given over to the viewer's own experience rather than constrained by the prescriptive power of labels.
Manishi Dey was an Indian painter of the Bengal School of Art. Manishi Dey was the younger brother of Mukul Dey, a pioneering Indian artist and dry point etcher. Their two sisters, Annapura and Rani, were accomplished in arts and crafts as well.
Sukumar Bose was an Indian artist based in Delhi who was trained in the tradition of the Bengal School under Asit Kumar Haldar.
Somenath Maity is an Indian artist known for his oil paintings of urban landscapes.
Raman Siva Kumar, known as R. Siva Kumar, is an Indian contemporary art historian, art critic, and curator. His major research has been in the area of early Indian modernism with special focus on the Santiniketan School. He has written several important books, lectured widely on modern Indian art and contributed articles to prestigious international projects such as the Art Journal, Grove Art Online or The Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press.
Ananta Mandal is an Indian artist. He has been recognized with international and national honours for his watercolour, oil, and acrylic paintings. He lives and works in Mumbai, India.
Biman Bihari Das is an Indian sculptor and former Principal of the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata. He was honoured by the Government of India, in 2014, by bestowing on him the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award, for his services to the field of Fine Arts.
Manu Parekh is an Indian painter, known for his several paintings on the city of Varanasi. Reported to be influenced by Rabindranath Tagore and Ram Kinker Baij, Parekh is a recipient of the 1982 Lalit Kala Akademi Award. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian award of the Padma Shri, in 1991.
Uma Bardhan is an Indian contemporary artist. Her paintings are usually themed on stories and positions which are under-represented in both mainstream and contemporary art culture. Her preferred medium is water color on silk, and she has also worked in other media, including oil on canvas. Her paintings are in several major collections in India & abroad. Her works has been hugely inspired by her formative years in Kolkata and her deep belief in spirituality. Originally from Kolkata she lives & works in Gurgaon, Haryana
Krishna Shamrao Kulkarni was an Indian painter and an educator. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics. He was also the founder-president of the avant-garde artist movement, the Delhi Shilpi Chakra.
Rathindranath Maitra or Rathin Maitra in short, also spelt as Rathin Moitra, was a prominent Bengali painter. He was one of the new generation of Indian modernist painters and co-founder of the Calcutta Group in 1943.
Bimal Das Gupta (1917–1995), was an Indian abstract artist. He was educated in the Government College of Arts and Crafts at Kolkata. He later joined the faculty of the College of Art, Delhi.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
