Last month the DAG art company acquired the 75-year-old Jamini Roy House in Kolkata to set up India’s first private single-artist museum. An ode to India’s national treasure, and a fitting precursor to the show Living Traditions & The Art of Jamini Roy, which opened at DAG Mumbai last month.
The intimate show brings together some of the artist’s distinctive works, together with his early impressionistic paintings into which are knitted his love for music and dance traditions, and his flowing images of the mother and child, the mythological evocative of local terracotta toys.
“Jamini Roy is the most significant artist India produced in the 20th century. His expressions have changed the way we perceive modernism. He gave it strong Indian roots, which is a major achievement, and today his works remain unique and are recognisable around the world,” says Ashish Anand, CEO and Managing Director, DAG. The brush drawings in lamp black by Roy are superlative renditions of Christ, and the mother and child.
In economy lies depth and Roy’s departure from ornamentation aligns the attention of the viewer on the focal point of the compositions — an artful connection with the subject.
Joys of solitude
Embracing the joys of solitude is ‘Soliloquies of Solitude: Five Indian Abstractionists in the West’, the second show at DAG Mumbai that brings together five Indian abstractionists from different parts of the world. “Whether spontaneous or controlled, the language of abstraction allows artists the freedom to experiment in ways that are not confined by academic rostering. This sense of liberation extends from artists to viewers as well, extending its scope and freeing it up from the necessities of interpretation. This exhibition explores the works of two printmakers…
Shilpi Madan for Sunday Herald