JAHAR DASGUPTA

J A H A R        D A S G U P T A

Nature, Woman, Imagination, Dreams. Added to these the poetry of a fish skimming the depts of water. Decade after decade Jahar Dasgupta has delved deep into his finger senses to visualise these on the canvas, to bestow an artistic interpretation. In his artistic interpretations, there is an intensity. There is also extreme restlesness, which often shelter the mirage of peace & calm. Above all, his paintings time to time, brings alive the poet in are. They inspire me to poetic heights.

                                 - Amitabh Dasgupta (National Poet)

He paints. He teaches. The Mecca of Art – The Academy of Fine Arts – he also manages its administration. With aplomb. Even smiling, a body language synonymus with good breeding. A magnetic quality, to attract people. Amidst all this- another citizen, another individual. A rare personality. In his work he is not only independent he is in search of an idiom which is individualistic. I would like to describe him as a story-teller of the times. He is a narrator of the present, with hope and dreams in his heart.

                                   - Shankar Majumder (Art Critic, The Statesman)

Reality transformed with an air of fantasy is, in a nutshell, the essence of forms of Jahar Dasgupta.

His art becomes a rebellion for him. In this sense Dasgupta is a romantic and rebellion in the same fold.

                                   - Mrinal Ghosh (Art Critic, Anandabazar Patrika)

In the context of contemporary modernism in Indian art, Jahar Dasgupta belongs to a genre of painting that reached its zenith in the 80s. Regarded as one of the pillars of contemporary art education and a significant contributor of the modernist art movement in Bengal, Dasgupta was educated in Fine Arts from Kala Bavan at Santiniketan in the mid-sixties. Jahar has been exhibiting his work regularly since he obtained his diploma under Viswabharati. He was involved with various cultural movements. He was founder member of Senjuti Art Gallery and Painters Orchestra and recent now he is the vice president of The Academy of Fine Arts. He organized his first solo exhibition at Birla Academy in 1967 and he still aspires to organize many more solos in near future. He has achieved many national and regional awards. And his works are brought by collectors from Korea to Australia. But Jahar Das Gupta has always been miles away from limelight.

His versatility comes partly from the diverse materials he works with and partly from the flexibility and layered richness of his visual language. The consummate ease with which he does this today is almost phenomenal but it is the outcome of long years of enquiry as an artist into the syntactical structure of representational convention. In retrospect we may relate this interest in visual language to his tutelage at Santiniketan under such master as Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Binode Behari Mukharjee. His drawing and painting, however, do not bear that imprint of style. Nor are they suggestive of any association with any other familiar art genre.

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