BySiddhi Jain

September 4, 2020 (IANSlife) Forty significant works by artist Jogen Chowdhury (born 1939) from the collection of Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan are currently on showcase in the national capital. They are part of a travelling exhibition, which was on display in Kolkata in November 2019 and Mumbai in January 2020.

The exhibition is on at the Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery and spans four decades of works by Chowdhury. The display comprises of works on paper, with ink and pastels, the preferred medium of the artist. It provides a rare opportunity to view a major body of work by the renowned artist, the earliest work on view is from 1965. 

According to the gallery, most of these works have never been exhibited in New Delhi.

Masanori Fukuoka, the man behind this collection has been an important contributor and supporter of Indian art and artists since 1989. He established the Glenbarra Art Museum in 1990 which houses modern and contemporary Indian Art. The
Museum’s collection of works by Chowdhury is one of the most extensive in private hands and offers a unique opportunity of viewing across several mediums and periods in the artist’s career, ranging from early drawings to detailed works in his signature cross-hatch style as well as the rarer to find canvases. In November 2019 the collection was relocated to a newly designed museum by Kawazoe Junichiro.

“Jogen Chowdhury is an artist with a singular sensibility. His innate sense of rhythm, his subtle ability to uncover the sensuality at the heart of events, to draw them together and to slip his longings and fears into a variety of things, truly distinguishes his work of the last 40 years. Behind his ability to gather everything in a cadenced embrace lies his genius to reach out and internalise the ‘other’," says R Siva Kumar.

The collection traces the artist’s career from the 1960s when he was a student in Paris, until 2005. The show is available to watch online on the gallery's website and physically by appointment from September 4-October 1.

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Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in