JOGEN CHOWDHURY (B. 1939)

Jogen Chowdhury moved to Calcutta in 1947, the year of India's independance, from a small town in Faridpur district in what is now Bangladesh. He graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts in 1960 and studied in Paris from 1965-68, first at the Ecole des Beaux Arts then at the legendary print studio, Atelier 17 founded by Stanley William Hayter. After returning to India, Chowdhury worked as a textile designer in Madras until he moved to Delhi in 1972. During these first few years after returning to India, Chowdhury developed his signature style: works executed in ink, watercolour and pastel, against a dark, vacant background with an emphasis on strong, sinuous lines and a distinctive crosshatching technique used to achieve tonal variations, texture and movement.

"Chowdhury interprets the human form as simplified, as if through x-ray vision: attenuated, exaggerated, fragmented, reconfigured and rephrased, thus intensifying its visual and conceptual expression. For Chowdhury, the body has to communicate in silence. Often placing it against a dark, vacant background, he does not appropriate the specificities of place or environment; instead he transfers feelings of anguish on to the solitary figure through his gestural mark-making. His deep, dense crosshatched lines simulate body hair and a web of veins take away the smooth sensuality of the classical body to manifest the textures of life." (K. Singh, India Modern: Narratives from 20th century Indian Art, New Delhi, 2015, p. 129)