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Jahar Dasgupta | |
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Born | Jahar Lal Dasgupta 31 May 1942 |
Nationality | Indian |
Education | Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan |
Occupation(s) | Painter, sculptor, social activist, teacher |
Years active | 1969–present |
Known for | Painting |
Awards | Paricharan Sarkar Memorial Award |
Jahar Dasgupta (born May 31, 1942) is a contemporary painter from India. [1] He was born in Jamshedpur, British India.
Jahar Dasgupta's childhood was spent in Jamshedpur where at a 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. He left the job to join the Central Institute of Mining and Fuel Research institute as a scientist.
At the age of 9, Dasgupta drew the face of Joseph Stalin and Ma Sarada Devi on a wall. This attracted 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 Baij 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 this struggling time, he also took many art commissions to support his family. Simultaneously, he continued to regularly participate in art shows.
Dasgupta developed his individual style in his paintings and drawings. Previously, he painted in oil medium and now mainly works in ink, pastel, and acrylic color.
His first solo exhibition was organized in Birla Academy. His other solo exhibitions took place in Laxman 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 has 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, in 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.
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 organized in Birla Art and Culture Kolkata, West Bengal. He developed his own style of expression since the beginning of the 1970s after passing through a period of apprenticeship during the 1960s. In this sense, he may be categorized as an artist of the 1970s.
There was a period of political turmoil starting in the late 1960s and ending in the early 1970s. 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 Dasgupta's creative expression. 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.
Dasgupta 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 Godot', '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.
Rotary Club of Madhyamgram recognized by Rotary International, facilitated Dasgupta with a Lifetime Achievement Award in Fine Arts in the year 2000.
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 focused on the various aspects of ideal beauty. The widespread nature of rural Bengal reveals its colorful 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.
While attending a talk entitled 'Nadir Bhabna' (Musings of the river) by Shri Alokeranjan Dasgupta, the artist Shri Jahar Dasgupta had a mind-blowing experience. This was his first acquaintance with the philosophy of the French thinker and evolutionist Henri Bergson (1894–1941). Bergson's uplifting spiritual content inspired Dasgupta. His current work reflects Bergson's philosophy; Dasgupta is the first artist to apply Bergson's theories to fine art, blending science and art on his canvas.
Dasgupta's is interested by the Aristotelian 'entelechy' – the endowment that gives rise to the potential of the vital force. This becomes the primary movement of his imagination. In Dasgupta's depiction of the teeming world of the humans, the birds, the 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. Thereby it creates an abstract form 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.
In the 1970s, like many people from art and cultural field in West Bengal, Dasgupta 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.
Dasgupta was the former President of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata where he lives and works. He currently works as the principal of the Swarsangam-Birla Institute of Visual and Performing Arts.
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