Important Notice

Jamini Roy's works are a result of his search for an artistic identity that is rooted in his socio-political consciousness. Born to a middle-class family in Bankura, West Bengal, Roy grew up surrounded by artisans and local craftsmen who would later inspire his works. He integrated the local Kalighat and Bankura styles into his paintings, creating a new idiom that employed simple forms and bold, flat colours. These works contained motifs from... Jamini Roy's works are a result of his search for an artistic identity that is rooted in his socio-political consciousness. Born to a middle-class family in Bankura, West Bengal, Roy grew up surrounded by artisans and local craftsmen who would later inspire his works. He integrated the local Kalighat and Bankura styles into his paintings, creating a new idiom that employed simple forms and bold, flat colours. These works contained motifs from regional folk tales and mythology that he distilled to create a progressive art form. Roy also used expressive contours and sweeping brushstrokes to highlight the details of his figures.

Roy's most frequent subjects were women, santhals, and rustic life. "Jamini Roy's images of Bengali women, at once voluptuous and demure, displaying the alta-painted hands and feet of domestic duty, have become the most iconic of Roys. With their graceful gestures, they came, in troubled times, to represent familiarity. This inimitable image of the Bengali woman became a universal icon for Calcutta's middle classes and it was this iconography that fed the nostalgia of the Bengali bhadralok." (Sona Datta, Urban Patua: The Art of Jamini Roy, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010, p. 26) These images depict the domestic lives of middle-class Bengali women, but also highlight their innate beauty and elegance.

In the present lots, Roy's use of flat, earthy colours and decisive lines reflects his exploration of the wooden and terracotta objects of the region. Roy eschews representational details in favour of simplicity through his smooth brushstrokes and basic forms. He articulates his subjects on a two-dimensional pictorial background replete with fluid, curved 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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