80 works by Jamini Roy to go public for the first time

Some of the largest collections of works by Indian masters lie in the hands of private collectors and art lovers do not get to see such works. One such collection of the works by Jamini Roy is owned by the Uma and Ravi Jain Estate, which owns Delhi’s oldest gallery.

For the first time, over 80 works by the 20th Century master will be on display in a 42-day show at Dhoomimal Gallery. The exhibition will feature drawings and paintings from more than a half-century-old assemblage of the private collectors.

The exhibition, curated by critic-scholar Uma Nair, has been titled “Carved Contours”. It represents Roy’s inspiration from the Kalighat and Pat traditions of Bengal done on cloth, board and paper. They feature simple monumental images of sari-clad women, village dancers and domestic animals, besides Madonna and Christ and the famed Ramayana series.

Ms. Jain says the collection happened with the aim of creating a portfolio. It was about taste and building a collection out of one’s own passion.

“Roy (1887-1972), who was a frontline pupil of iconic Abanindranath Tagore, developed a style that scholars note was a reaction against the Bengal School and Western tradition of art. He abandoned the use of European paints in favour of mineral and vegetable-based pigments made from rock-dust, tamarind seeds, alluvial mud and indigo,” noted Ms. Nair.

At ‘Carved Contours’, the curator has come up with the Jamini works in clusters, suiting the ambience marked by the gallery’s high ceiling. There are drawings on one wall and coloured works on the other.

“Roy’s admiration for rural folk art was politically motivated. It was part of a nationalistic desire to find an artistic style free from colonialism. His works of men and women explore the economy of line, the beauty of gesture and the compositional clarity of the frontal perspective,” Ms. Nair added.

The exhibition is on till March 10 at Dhoomimal Gallery, Connaught Place.