Important Notice

Jamini Roy is a bit of a paradox among India's modern artists. Formally trained at the Government Art School of Calcutta, his search for an original expression led him back to his roots, to Kalighat patuas and Bengali scrolls. He appropriated the medium, creating works of art that used simple forms, bold, flat colours, and subjects taken from local folk tales and mythology. It has been noted that he restricted his palette to seven earthly,... Jamini Roy is a bit of a paradox among India's modern artists. Formally trained at the Government Art School of Calcutta, his search for an original expression led him back to his roots, to Kalighat patuas and Bengali scrolls. He appropriated the medium, creating works of art that used simple forms, bold, flat colours, and subjects taken from local folk tales and mythology. It has been noted that he restricted his palette to seven earthly, mineral colours.

Through the 1930s, Roy lent his personal vision to many iconic scenes from the Ramayana, such as the present lot. Sita, abducted by Ravana, seems to have turned away as Jatayu, the king of vultures, attempts to stop Ravana but has his wing severed. Roy captures a sequence of events in a single frame, choosing the pivotal event of Sita's abduction which sets the course for the rest of the epic. While the arrows in the background do not relate directly to the scene, it is likely that he drew on the idea of the battle that follows between Ram and Ravana for the embellishment.

This particular scene from the Ramayana was one he would return to reinterpret again at various stages of his career. Another version from the early 1940s is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.48-1979). A later version is in the Harn Museum of Art, where the positions of the figures are reversed. The Harn Museum at the University of Florida in Gainesville holds a sizeable collection of Jamini Roy works.

Art critic Ella Datta, who curated the Jamini Roy's retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai, explains that Roy drew on the Ramayana "...to introduce a narrative element in his painting. It also helped him communicate with ordinary people because he was entering their familiar world of imagination."

With the artist's continuous search for self-expression and identity, Jamini Roy's life, like his art, is representative of the nationalist movement in post-independence India. His work has played a large role in defining the importance of folk art within the context of Indian modernism.

Limiting Roy's return to his roots as a rejection of the modern, Western world, however, would be too simplistic an interpretation of his art form. Roy's training, personal technique and style sets his art uniquely beyond the folk idiom.

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