Important Notice

The "bankura" horse recurs throughout the folk and craft traditions of Jamini Roy'snative Bankura region of West Bengal. In the present lot, Jamini Roy captures thecolours and vibrancy of the traditional art of the region. Manasij Majumdar writes that Roy "often preferred to make images with bare minimal content and a rich formalist handling. Even when he treated a motif comprising two or more figures, he always eschewed all inessential... The "bankura" horse recurs throughout the folk and craft traditions of Jamini Roy'snative Bankura region of West Bengal. In the present lot, Jamini Roy captures thecolours and vibrancy of the traditional art of the region. Manasij Majumdar writes that Roy "often preferred to make images with bare minimal content and a rich formalist handling. Even when he treated a motif comprising two or more figures, he always eschewed all inessential representational details to move towards extreme simplification of the basic form, defined by smooth easy curved brush strokes most often in black or dark Indian red... the motifs are evoked on a flat pictorial space structured and defined not with colours but with the splendid pictorial finality of fluent, curved and bold lines. What strikes the viewer instantly is not any theme as such but forms and figures with a striking finesse of lineal elegance. Their expressiveness lies not in any subtle, complex or elaborate thematic statement but in their rigorous simplicity, scrupulous elimination of naturalism and simple myth-like evocativeness." (Manasij Majumdar, "Jamini Roy - Modernism's Nationalist Face," Jamini Roy: National Art Treasure, Kolkata: Purba, 2015, p. 55)

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