Jogen Chowdhury
Born 15 February 1939. Educated at the Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta and subsequently at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, Jogen is one painter who has inspired young artists of contemporary India, in a significant way.
The pulse and rhythm of Jogen Chowdhury’s art comes from a filial affinity to nature and milieu. In Chowdhury’s more recent works the sensory experiences of cloth, bolsters, sofas and the human body are cross-projected to produce an uncanny world of tran-substantiated tumescence and flaccidness. Mnemic displacements and personal associations add to the symbolic ambivalence of his motifs, making his images come closer to inexplicable experiences than to explicit signs
Jogen Chowdhury has been widely acknowledged to be, the master of the unbroken line. Like Leger, Chowdhury has been stirred by the linear Kalighat pat tradition, but his lines are emotive and used to express and suggest the character of a person.
In Jogen Chowdhury’s work, the figure is always in the foreground, it is primary, it conveys everything. He uses colour to give volume to his figures and the fluidity of his lines bring a sensual aspect to his forms. Chowdhury is fascinated by history. Having experienced the traumatic effects of the Partition, dislocation and a sense of isolation, his figures reflect an intractable solitude.
The artist had his first solo exhibition in 1954 in Kolkata, and has since exhibited widely across the world including at venues like the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Piccadilly Gallery, London; Galerie Doucet et Coutureau, Paris; Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milan; and Galerie Sagar, Zurich.
Burman has participated in several shows, some of the most recent including The Beholder’s Share by Jehangir Art Gallery and Art Musings in Mumbai in 2016; A Private Universe by Art Alive Gallery in New Delhi in 2015; Rituals and Reasons: Invoking the Sensual in Art, at Apparao Galleries in Chennai in 2014; The Wonder of it All, a retrospective exhibition by Pundole Art Gallery and Apparao Galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in 2012, Archetype and Enraputured Gaze at Aicon Gallery in London and New York in 2009; Faces of Indian Art organised by Art Alive at the Visual Art Gallery, New Delhi; Understanding Oneness in Diversity at Kitab Mahal, Mumbai; An Evening in Paris …Rome…London at Gallery Sanskriti, Kolkata; and Resonance organised by Art Musings at Museum Gallery, Mumbai, all in 2007.
Burman was awarded the Medaille d’Argent au Salon de Montmorency and the Prix des Etrangers, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1956.
