In news- Year 2021 marks the 150th birth anniversary of Abanindranath Tagore. The celebration, titled Abanindranath at 150: Bichitra Revisited, is being organised jointly by Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata, and DAG.
About Abanindranath Tagore-
- Abanindranath Tagore was born on 7 August 1871.
- He was the nephew of Rabindranath Tagore.
- This collaboration is in the spirit of experimentation and exchange that took place at Abanindranath’s Bichitra Studio at Jorasanko (the ancestral home of the Tagore family in Kolkata).
- He was the principal artist and creator of the “Indian Society of Oriental Art”.
- He sought to modernise the Mughal and the Rajput styles in order to counter the influence of Western models of art under the colonial regime.
- He was also the first major exponent of Swadeshi values in Indian art, thereby founding the influential Bengal school of art, which led to the development of modern Indian painting.
- In his later works, Tagore started integrating Chinese and Japanese calligraphic traditions into his style.
- His finest achievement was the Arabian Nights series which was painted in 1930 in which he used the Arabian Nights stories as a means of looking at colonial Calcutta and picturing its emergent cosmopolitanism.
- His close students included Nandalal Bose, Samarendranath Gupta, Kshitindranath Majumdar, Surendranath Ganguly, Asit Kumar Haldar, Sarada Ukil, Manishi Dey, Mukul Dey, K. Venkatappa.
- Abanindranath became chancellor of Visva Bharati in 1942.
- A list of paintings by Abanindranath Tagore are Passing of Shah Jahan (1900), Ashoka’s Queen (1910), Bharat Mata (1905) and Moonlight Music Party (1906).
- He was also a noted writer, particularly for children.
- Popularly known as ‘Aban Thakur’, his books Rajkahini, Buro Angla, Nalak, and Khirer Putul were landmarks in Bengali language children’s literature and art.
- Victoria Memorial Hall is the custodian of the Rabindra Bharati Society collection, the single-largest collection of works by the artist.
Source: The Hindu
