Nirode Mazumdar

Nirode Mazumdar (11 May 1916[1] – 26 September 1982[2]) was an Indian painter from the first generation of modernists, and a key member of the Calcutta Group.

Long before his other contemporaries recognised the importance of symbolism, he applied them generously to achieve his philosophical and artistic aspirations.

[5] Nirode Mazumdar was admitted into the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta in 1929 while he was only a mere boy of 13 and had his first education under Kshitindranath Majumdar, a student of Abanindranath Tagore.

However, while studying under Abanindranath, Mazumdar was showing signs of disapproval and rebellion with how outdated the Bengal School was in keeping up with the socio-political climate at that time.

“Get him here, let’s have a look at his paintings.” Niru-da would show his latest work: might be a composition of Rajasthani women walking in a graceful rhythm with three pots balanced one atop the other on their heads.

Mazumdar entered Paris during its golden period, Artists like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Constantin Brâncuși were at the helm of their careers, students from across the world were flocking to Paris as it was the Mecca for the art world, studying at the various academies and studios, engaging in the café culture where long discussions on art with fellow students and friends took place.

Between 1946 and 1951, Nirode Mazumdar stayed is in Paris, and worked in different Parisian studios and participated in various exhibitions of foreign painters mainly at the École des Beaux-Arts.

He left France for England in 1951 and there, he took part in exhibitions organized by the Indian High Commission in London, group shows, held at the India House and worked for some time as a curator of the art gallery there.

Back in Paris, Nirode continued his pictorial research, at the same time, plunging into the oriental philosophies, mythologies, his cultural heritage, and, in 1957, exhibits a series of oil paintings "Images Ecloses" (Blooming Images) in his Paris studio, the fruit of his research and study.

From this time onwards and on his return to Calcutta, Nirode Mazumdar kept on working, searching, researching in pictorial, aesthetic, as well as philosophical domains.

Subho Thakur’s Neel rokto lal hoye gelo (Blue blood turns red) had just been published...around 1942 or ‘43.

In 1943, during the time of the Bengal Famine, Niru-da and Subho Thakur brought out a new magazine called Atikrama (trans) under their joint editorship.

From this angle there can possibly be no doubt that the artists of the ‘Calcutta Group’ were the chief pioneers of modernity in Indian art.

A critic of ‘The Statesman’ wrote: “The source from which the Calcutta Group, who I expect would issue a manifesto of their artistic preferences derives its inspiration from Gauguin, Modigliani and Matisse.

In January 1949 the fourth Annual Exhibition of the group took place in Artistry House at 15 Park Street which was heavily praised by the press and critics.

Establishing itself in 1943 when Bengal was oppressed by famine and pestilence and when the whole Eastern and Western world seemed to be abandoned by the gods, these painters assembled themselves in order to demonstrate that MAN was still alive and was to dominate the Fine Arts which had flourished already in spite of social disruption.

Nirode Mazumdar was the first Indian artist to be awarded a French Government Scholarship, in 1937 Prodosh Dasgupta went to the Royal Academy to learn sculpture and soon painters like Paritosh Sen, S.H.Raza, Ram Kumar, Shanu Lahiri, Sankho Chowdhury, Haimati Sen, Anjolie Ela Menon and Akbar Padamsee followed.

As a vehicle for the Hindu doctrinal concept, Nirode Mazumdar adopted the story of Bipula and Lakshmindar in his 'Images Ecloses' series.

In each canvas an identical point holds the central position-'hrid pushkara'-according to which the patterns are distributed and is the stable zone of the non-manifested from which the whole picture is generated.

In 1962, a retrospective "Ten years of painting" was held at The Academy of Fine Arts, while "Visual Hymn" his third series consisted of 13 paintings to texts aimed at expressing the Tantric idea was held at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai 1963, "Nine Variations on Symbolic Nine" Homage to Dante, was held at The Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta 1965- here the artist was purely concerned with descriptive numbers where the ontological and logical orders are interwoven in rhythmical and geometrical images.

"Shodosi Kala" (the Cosmic Mother in different hours of the day and different periods of the year) was held at the Academy of Fine Arts in Calcutta in1967 and marked an important point in the artist's oeuvre of constructive symbolism.

This exhibition was organized by the Alliance Française of New Delhi under the patronage of Jean Daridan, the French Ambassador at that time.

In the years 1979–1982, Nirode Mazumdar started writing his memoirs under the title "Punascha Parry" (Paris Revisited) in the weekly Bengali magazine "Desh".

Once his memoirs finished, he was working with the publisher "Ananda Publications" to bring out "Punascha Parry" in the form of a book.

In 1969 and 1971 he participated in the Indian Triennale held in New Delhi and in 1970 the Lalit Kala Akademi elected him as an eminent artist.

With both technical control and emotional spontaneity they combine the best of his two worlds- the early education he received under the Bengal School and his exposure to modernist trends he experienced in Paris as a student.

We get a glimpse about his practice from an interview given by his equally talented son Chittrovanu Mazumdar- "My earliest memories are very visual.

A palette, at eye level and close up, this lush substance, the smell of oil paint, the violence of different colours being mixed together at lightning speed, right in front of my eyes-entirely tactile and sensual.

"[9] With no elaborate technique and the apparent use of heavy lines, Nirode Mazumdar's paintings often give the impression of a mysterious tree spreading its branches.

For Mazumdar, any painting needed to be geometrically visualised and the visual idea could not be translated into concrete terms except through geometry.