JAMINI ROY (1887-1972)

"Roy's striking formalist pictorial language, his simple monumental images of sari-clad women, madonnas, village dances and domestic animals have become iconic [...] In short, for this Bengali formalist, 'true' art did not consist in copying nature, but in offering the but in offering the essential form in all honesty and without frills." (P. Mitter, The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avante-garde 1922-1947, New Delhi, 2007, p. 112)

These paintings are vibrant examples of Roy's aesthetic, rejoicing in the pure, audacious elegance of composition and subject. The intense, earthy colors and boldness of line establish Roy's narrative seamlessly, one that is simultaneously uncomplicated and many layered, successfully transcending the sentimentality of other Bengali modernists.