Important Notice

Lot 41

Jogen Chowdhury, born and brought up in what is now Bangladesh, was a rebel from the very beginning. Rejecting the popular style of the Bengal School as bourgeois, Chowdhury pioneered a new `low-brow` figuration through his art. Drawing inspiration from the stories he was brought up listening to and the people he encountered everyday, Chowdhury`s figures reflect both the magic and the realities of Indian life.

In this early... Jogen Chowdhury, born and brought up in what is now Bangladesh, was a rebel from the very beginning. Rejecting the popular style of the Bengal School as bourgeois, Chowdhury pioneered a new `low-brow` figuration through his art. Drawing inspiration from the stories he was brought up listening to and the people he encountered everyday, Chowdhury`s figures reflect both the magic and the realities of Indian life.

In this early monochromatic watercolor, the artist portrays a sleeping woman, probably one of the Bengali housewives he has come to know so well, whose sari has inadvertently slipped off her shoulder. This portrait is so peaceful and natural that it lifts its subject out of her ordinary, predictable life into the one that she is perhaps dreaming about. Foreshadowing the fluid form and solid line that characterizes Chowdhury`s later paintings, this piece also points out the attention that the artist pays to the unique ways in which Indian men and women stand, sit, sleep and move – something he calls “the reality of the Indian form” (R Siva Kumar, Jogen Chowdhury – Enigmatic Visions, Glenbarra Art Museum, 2005, p. 91).

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