JAMINI ROY
April 11, 1887 – April 24, 1972, Beliatore, West Bengal
Walk into an average middle-class art-loving household of West Bengal and chances are that you might come across a well-preserved portrait of Jamini Roy rather than a fancy looking artwork of one of India’s many modern artists.
Early Life
While most of the Indian painters of the 20th Century were excited about modern art, which fetched them good returns, Jamini Roy stood out for his love towards Indian roots. His passion for simple Indian folk art was such that he did not care about selling his works for fancy prices and only sold them for as little as 350 rupees. He was known to buy back his works, should he find out that his paintings are maintained poorly by the buyer. Influenced by the simplicity of Kalighat paintings, Jamini Roy gave up on modern art and stuck to his roots, winning millions of hearts in the process.
His Style
Jamini Roy was born to an affluent family in Beliatore village in the Bankura district of West Bengal. His father, Ramataran Roy, resigned from his government services to pursue his interest in art. In the year 1903, when Jamini Roy was only 16 years old, he left his village and made it all the way to Calcutta to enroll himself at the Government College of Art. There, he received education under Abanindranath Tagore, famous for his valuable contribution in the field of modern Indian art.
Roy finished his education in 1908 and was given a Diploma in Fine Arts.
In 1954, the Government of India honored him with Padma Bhushan for his contribution towards art..
His Work
Jamini Roy’s artistic journey saw two distinctive phases – the early 1920’s showed his influence of the Bengal School style of painting and marked his entry into the Post-Impressionist genre as seen in his landscape and portrait paintings. Later and around the mid 1930’s one sees the development of a more minimalist style where broad, bold brush strokes brought to life religious and mythological characters, Santhal tribals and of course everyday life of rural Bengal with great aplomb.
As his intrinsic style took shape, Jamini Roy moved away from conventional practise of painting on canvas and explored painting on traditional materials such as hand spun cloth and lime coated wooden panels, his choice of paints also moved to pigments derived from earth, plants and other natural elements.
