Jamini Roy
Jamini Roy was born in 1887 in a Bengali village in Bankura district, West Bengal, an area which was extremely rich in folk art tradition.
In 1903 he enrolled in the Govt. School of Art, Calcutta. He was the most famous pupil of Abanindranath Tagore.
Some of his works bore residues of the Bengal School mannerisms. He made some brilliant forays into a Post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits, yet Roy’s early career was calamitous. He endured extreme poverty and his work was lack-lustre and banal. He undertook odd jobs to survive. Disheartened, Roy began a wrenched journey to discover his own true style. Roy discovered the answer to his predicament right in rural Bengal, in Kalighat paintings, the popular bazaar paintings sold outside the Kalighat temple in Calcutta.
By1930s he had made a complete switch to indigenous materials. He abandoned the canvas and made his own painting surfaces out of cloth, wood, even mats coated with lime, and painted using earth and vegetable colours. The 1930's saw the beginning of his scintillating career, which spanned well into the 60's.
Jamini's presentation of Santhal drummers, toiling blacksmith, Krishna-Balaram and women figures like Radhas, Gopi's, Pujarinis and Virgin and Child became very popular during the 1940s. His collectors included the middle-class Bengalis as well as the European community. His work was exhibited in London in 1946 and in New York in 1953. He was honored with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1955.
He died a much celebrated and revolutionary artist, at the age of 85, in Calcutta in 1972.