Important Notice

“I felt it was my duty to speak for the people, through my work.”
– JAMINI ROY

Jamini Roy’s artistic career and practice is best known for introducing a new style of modern painting in India that celebrated and preserved regional artistic traditions while simultaneously reconceptualising them. Born in 1887 in a small village in Beliatore in the Bankura district of West Bengal, Roy began his career by painting in the... “I felt it was my duty to speak for the people, through my work.”
– JAMINI ROY

Jamini Roy’s artistic career and practice is best known for introducing a new style of modern painting in India that celebrated and preserved regional artistic traditions while simultaneously reconceptualising them. Born in 1887 in a small village in Beliatore in the Bankura district of West Bengal, Roy began his career by painting in the post-Impressionist genre of landscapes and portraits that was in keeping with his training at the Government School of Art in Kolkata. However, he soon became disillusioned with the British Academic style of painting and sought new artistic styles that reflected his cultural roots and fulfilled his need for a more personal artistic identity.

Roy’s search for a new artistic style brought him in contact with the nationalist art of the Abanindranath Tagore-led Bengal School. As a result of his exposure to this burgeoning art movement, Roy began drawing influences from regional Indian artistic traditions, such as Kalighat patuas, Bengali scrolls, crafts, wooden and clay toys, and terracotta objects from the Bankura region.

The influence of indigenous art in Roy’s work was deeper than merely borrowing stylistic or structural elements or iconography. His artistic process also involved an adaptation and reinterpretation of subjects and themes explored in regional art, usually through several versions of the same work created over a long period of time. As seen in lots 16, 17 and 18, his paintings primarily feature characters and narratives from local folklore and mythology, often rendered in a limited range of flat, earthy colours and decisive lines.

Through his work, Roy created an artistic language that he could identify with. Having lived and painted during a period of great socio-political upheavals and accelerated modernisation and urbanisation, Roy’s artistic choices were naturally affected by his sociopolitical consciousness. Art historian Sona Datta explains his artistic style as a “very deep concern with regeneration and the recovery of ‘roots’... The search for identity and rootedness became an object and ‘Back to the village’ became a popular slogan in the freedom struggle.” (Sona Datta, Urban Patua: The Art of Jamini Roy, Mumbai: Marg Publications, 2010, pp. 33-35)

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