Jogen Chowdhury

Jogen Chowdhury (born 19 February 1939) is an eminent Indian painter and considered an important painter of 21st century India. He lives and works in Santiniketan. He graduated from the Government College of Art & Craft, Kolkata and subsequently at École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1967. He has immense contribution in inspiring young artists of India. Jogen Chowdhury had developed his individual style after his return from Paris. His most famous paintings are in ink, water colour and pastel. He has painted in oil medium as well.

Jogen Chowdhury
Chowdhury at Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, 2012.
Member of Parliament,Rajya Sabha
In office 3 April 2014 – 2 April 2020
Constituency	West Bengal
Personal details
Born	(1939-02-19)19 February 1939 Daharpara, Faridpur, Bengal Presidency, British India
Political party	All India Trinamool Congress
Education	University of Calcutta; Government College of Art & Craft
Occupation	Painter
Awards	Banga Bibhushan (2012)
Website	www.jogenchowdhury.net

Lines and its tactile characteristic to enhance colours is an important material in Indian Art for ages. Jogen Chowdhury himself is a master of lines and he has mastered to make the curves depict the character of his figures. By careful distortion of the form he imparts the air of caricature in his figures, figures of men and women. The figure is always the most important and conveys all the artist has to express. Colour, he uses though, is to provide matter into the form. R. Siva Kumar has lucidly described Jogen's works in the following excerpt:"The pulse and rhythm of Jogen Chowdhury’s art comes from a filial affinity to nature and milieu. In Chowdhury’s more recent works the sensory experiences of cloth, bolsters, sofas and the human body are cross-projected to produce an uncanny world of tran-substantiated tumescence and flaccidness. Mnemic displacements and personal associations add to the symbolic ambivalence of his motifs, making his images come closer to inexplicable experiences than to explicit signs. In the postures of some figures we feel an animal sentience, in the ripe anatomy of others we savour a fruity succulence. The figures are wrought by a combination of decorative wilfulness and expressive distortion and are imbued with an effusive sensuality. Chowdhury’s art is rich in suggestions; it is to be apprehended without bracketing our fund of knowledge, experience or memories, but also cannot be narrativised without trivialising it, without depleting its sensory particularities."[1]