Important Notice

Over the last five decades, Jogen Chowdhury has developed a distinctive idiom, inspired by Indian family life and traditional folklore. His drawings are basic, and his lines, strong and fluid. Breaking down form to its bare minimum, the artist then exaggerates its proportions and fills it in with rich texture using an intricate network of crosshatches. The size of each marking and the distance between a series is replicated meticulously,... Over the last five decades, Jogen Chowdhury has developed a distinctive idiom, inspired by Indian family life and traditional folklore. His drawings are basic, and his lines, strong and fluid. Breaking down form to its bare minimum, the artist then exaggerates its proportions and fills it in with rich texture using an intricate network of crosshatches. The size of each marking and the distance between a series is replicated meticulously, highlighting the tension in the images created by the distortion of his figures and the intensity of his line. “In them disproportion is expression, never deformation” (R. Siva Kumar, Jogen Chowdhury: Enigmatic Visions, Glenbarra Art Museum, Fukuoka, 2005, p. 9).

“There is a pervasive sensuality in Jogen’s work, eroticism breathing from every pore, not loudly like a thumping heart but softly as a relaxed breath. It awakens our senses of touch and sight and brings them together as only intimate encounters with the world do…Jogen does not stress the specificities of place, and, therefore, of time or history in his work while recreating experiences. It is a theatre without props, only bodies” (Ibid., p. 10).

In the present lot, a large pen and ink drawing on paper lightly coloured with pastels, Chowdhury portrays a middle-aged woman lying seductively on a bed, her hair pulled back neatly in a bun and her eyes wide with anticipation. The lower half of her body is draped is a light cloth, perfectly silhouetting her curves, while her bare breasts are revealed boldly to an unknown audience. The woman’s slender fingers seem to be playing provocatively with the edge of the sheets, enticing the viewer, and illuminating the artist’s masterful communication of human form and relationships.

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