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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).

An unusual, closely cropped rendering of a woman's face, this ink and pastel work on paper highlights Chowdhury's flair for the ornamental as well as his eye for detail. Here, the artist builds each feature of his subject, including her nose-pin and the unusual tattoo on her chin. The yellow bindi on her forehead matches her sari, which has been pulled tightly around her face. The garment is elaborately patterned, recalling perhaps the year that the artist spent at the Weavers' Service Center in Madras designing decorative fabrics.

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