Jogen Chowdhury

Jogen Chowdhury, who was born in 1939 in Faridpur (erstwhile) Bengal, is renowned for his ability to merge traditional iconography with the zeitgeist of contemporary painting through a deft combination of urbane self-awareness and a highly regionalized Bengali influence. His early works display a focus on figuration that is seen in his more recent works. His formative years were affected by the famine, the Partition, and the food movement, and it is possible to detect a grim undertone in Chowdhury's work. This darkness can be perceived to generate an air of mystery in addition to serving as a sign of sadness. In Chowdhury's more recent paintings, which increasingly crop the central image, the impact is reinforced. His idea was to conceal some parts because he believes that the audience would stop caring about the specifics the instant he reveals the complete figure. The weight of truth was heavier when the figures were first seen through expressionistic stylization and in their natural bearings. Today, there is an effect of distancing. His works have appeared in numerous exhibitions, including the I, III, and IV Triennales in Delhi in 1972, 1975, and 1978; the Sao Paolo Biennale in 1979; the II Havana Biennale in 1986; the Festival of India in Geneva in 1989; and, with Saffronart, the Pundole Art Gallery in New York and the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi in 2001, 2002, and 2007. His works are held in collections by the Glenbarra Museum in Japan, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi. You can browse through our gallery of Serigraphs to see more of his artworks and paintings along with other famous serigraph artists. Jogen Chowdhury recently held a retrospective exhibition at Gallery Art Exposure, which displayed over 300 pieces of his artwork created between 1955 and 2023. The exhibition covered the entirety of Chowdhury's life in art, showcasing how his childhood during Partition, his observations of alpona and terracotta goddesses, his time at the Government College of Art & Craft in Kolkata where he learned to draw by observing, his stay in Paris where he viewed works by Pablo Picasso, and his years as a textile designer with the National Handloom Board in Chennai have all influenced his art. The exhibition also included some of his previously published poems. Despite being 84 years old, Jogen is currently working on a series of works in oil, which is a medium he has not often used.