Brush as a weapon
RANA SIDDIQUI
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From wielding weapons to employing dexterous brushstrokes, Jiten Hazarika has done it all. The seasoned artist's works are on display in the Capital.
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ACADEMIC One of Jiten Hazarika's works mounted at Dhoomimal Art Gallery.
In 1981, a Major at Andaman and Nicobar Islands surprised all in the Army, especially Bengalis by making a Durga idol when the ship supposed to carry the idol didn't reach the venue in time. The Major, with truckloads of clay, prepared a 12-foot idol within the specified time and the celebrations got going!
In 1990, this qualified engineer left the Army for his passion: painting. Though he abandoned his BFA from the J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, within three months of joining as he got admission to an engineering college in Assam University, he couldn't do away with his brush. His colleagues in the Army saw him painting often. Some even bought some of his works.
Today, at 71, he is not only presenting his solo shows but his works are subject to academic research by various universities across the country. Meet Jiten Hazarika, Assam's very own `dada' (elder brother), and Delhi's reputed artist. Hazarika's creations of oil on canvas are mounted at Dhoomimal Art Gallery where he came some 16 years ago with a few of his works to gauge the visitors' response. Then he had sold a few of them for Rs.18,000. Today, each work sells for over a lakh.
Feel good
In this show titled The Human Touch, one notices three important elements: one, it has all women from the hills either busy in their chores, gossiping or waiting; second, barring a very few which depict anguish or pain, most of them have a feel-good factor, and the third, there are countless hues but subdued. Explains the artist, who resembles popular singer Manna Dey, "I don't like to emphasise poverty or gloom in my works. It amounts to demanding sympathy from the onlookers. So the characters on my canvases are contented. They are modest, nonetheless." One can credit this trait to his humble upbringing. His financially weak surveyor father concentrated on providing a good academic education. Hazarika found time to paint by making his own wooden brush, procuring colours from his mother's red sindoor, indigo (neel) that she used for clothes, and red and blue ink tablets, besides clay to obtain the colour brown. He didn't have money to buy brush and colours, he explains. He even sold his old rifles and musical instruments but kept his passion for art alive.
Hazarika explains the use of subdued hues, "If someone speaks in whispers, it draws more attention than loud talk." If lots of geometrical figures and motifs hide themselves subtly behind the hints of landscapes in his works, women make their presence felt. They depict `nau rasa' without being upfront.
Today there is a group of 22 research students researching on him in Amritsar's Guru Nanak University. A Meerut University student has already completed his doctorate, while another from Agra has just finished his M.Phil. "I am surprised. They say my works are academic in nature. I try to inculcate my knowledge of the Bhagvad Purana, the Gita and dedicate all my works to my mother Savitri. I believe rave reviews on my works in the 1960s in a Kolkata newspaper kept my passion for painting alive," sums up Hazarika.
The show concludes March 13.
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