JOGEN CHOWDHURY (B. 1939)

From 1973, Reminiscences of a Dream 42 (Still Life) exemplifies Jogen Chowshury's signature crosshatch style. Chowdhury's remarkable draughtsmanship reflects his extensive work with textiles where repetition, patterning and direction are paramount.

"The Dream series continued for some seven years, unabated from 1969 to 1976. It changed of course, so that the familiar symbols of the fish and the lotus were gradually replaced by the butterfly, the hand, a vase of flowers, or a basket of fruits [...] Reminiscences of a Dream 42 introduces a vase of flowers on a table that is covered with a rumpled table-cloth, with two butterflies, still and almost lifeless [...] The poignancy of the flowers, emanating a vibrancy in a still space, makes them almost as hallucinatory as Aldous Huxley's vision of flowers after the effect of mescalin, which possess a 'praeternatural' brilliance." (G. Sen, Image and Imagination, Five Contemporary Artists in India, Ahmedabad, 1996, pp. 60, 62)