Important Notice

Born on 18 September 1867, into the Tagore family in Kolkata, Gaganendranath Tagore as a self-taught artist and nephew of the great poet and nationalist Rabindranath Tagore.

Gaganendranath had very little formal education; in fact he had a very short spell at the St Xavier's School where he took a brief interest in drawing and painting and a briefer still one in academic studies. His interest in life and later art, was limited to, and... Born on 18 September 1867, into the Tagore family in Kolkata, Gaganendranath Tagore as a self-taught artist and nephew of the great poet and nationalist Rabindranath Tagore.

Gaganendranath had very little formal education; in fact he had a very short spell at the St Xavier's School where he took a brief interest in drawing and painting and a briefer still one in academic studies. His interest in life and later art, was limited to, and conditioned by his love for everything swadeshi (native).

In fact even his earliest attempts at sketches are linked to the freedom movement. During the period of 1906-07, he used to receive frequent summons to serve on the special jury. During the course of his visits to the court, Gaganendranath would make use of his time making sketches of the jurors and counsel. This is where it's said that he evolved as an artist and cartoonist.

In 1907, he founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art along with his brother Abanindranath Tagore, but Gaganendranath remained the moving spirit behind it.

Coming form a political background --- his family was involved in the freedom struggle --- his work seems to be inspired and his imagination carried away by anything Indian or Oriental. His earliest sketches and landscapes date back to 1905. While his landscapes bear a Japanese stamp --- he was inspired by Japanese artist Yokoyama Taikan. His work also shows a great influence of experimentalist art prevalent in Europe in the late 1800's. He was extremely proficient in the European watercolour technique.

During 1916-18, he evolved a new language of humor and satire in caricature. His work also found it’s way to magazines and newspapers and thus was born a new department in art called Vichitra Club.

In 1923-28 he experimented with cubism, producing a series of pictures filled with blended geometric forms. He later developed his own brand of cubism, most of his work in the process moving towards geometric compositions.

His work can thus be broadly divided into specific phases. Brush work with Japanese style, some with gold backgrounds, portrait sketches, illustrations for Jeevan Smriti, water colour sketches of rural Bengal, the Himalayan studies, the Chaitanya series, caricatures of Indian life, his semi-cubistic experiments, pictures of folk lore and representations of the symbolism of death and the other world.

Apart from his paintings, Gaganendranath was known for his interest in photography. Black and white being the medium used those days, a lot of his work on canvas is also inspired by the interplay of the two colours, developing a mysterious relationship on canvas.

Rabindranath Tagore, his uncle, is said to have commented on his art in 1938, "What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new art movement ... he sought out his own untrodden path of adventure, attempted marvelous experiments in colouring and made fantastic trials in the magic of light and shade."

The largest number of paintings of Gaganendranath now forms part of Rabindra-Bharati Society's collection at Jorasanko, Kolkata. Gaganendranath Tagore passed away on 14 February 1938 in Calcutta.

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