July’21, 2016, New Delhi: Padma Bhushan awardee Jamini Roy(11 April 1887- 24 April 1972),was one of the finest painters of 20th century, who gave a new way to the painting styles, by extracting the real expressions of Bengali’s Folk art. His paintings were the influence of “Kalighat”, a kind of style of art with bold sweeping and brush strokes. His paintings were the reaction against Western tradition and the Bengali culture. Roy’s painting portrays the emotions of folks, dipped with high scale of honor for them.
With traditional flavor his paintings also included religious touch of Ramayana, Sri Chaitanya, Radha-Krishna and Jesus Christ, by only using expressions, and without being narrative. According to the report presented by cultural India (Digital website news portal) initially, his paintings were dull and bland but, later he gained acclamation through his different perspective of paintings.
Jamini Roy was born in the family of Land owners in Beliatore village of Bankura District, West Bengal. He learnt painting at the “Government College of Art” and earned fame by deriving his own inspirations and language of his paintings and named them “Flat Techniques”. While experimenting with natural colors, such as chalk powder and vegetable colors, Roy gave language to the scene of rural Bengal. Life of Santhals was also one of the important themes of his paintings including ‘Santhals engaged in drum-beating’ ‘Santhal Mother and Child’ ‘Dancing Santhals’ etc. Jamini Roy’s paintings gained major popularity during 1940s including Bengali middle class and European community as the major buyers.
Recently, Dr Nirmalya Kumar, owner of the largest known private collections of 70 odd Jamini Roy’s paintings, exhibited his paintings at the prestigious Museo elle Culture, Lugano Switzerland and titled the exhibition as “Jamini Roy”. His unique concept of paintings gave a new platform to amateurs for learning innovative painting styles.
Top 5 paintings of Jamini roy:
1) Gopini :
2) Mother and Child:
3) Bird with two fish:
4) Black Horse:
5) Cat and Lobster
