Jamini Roy was born in a small village in Beliatore, West Bengal in 1887. He started studying at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata in 1903. He began his career painting landscapes and portraits in a post-impressionist style, due to his training in European academic-realist painting. By 1925, Roy had begun moving away from his academic works and started experimenting with various styles. One of his experiments was painting on woven mats to achieve a mosaic-like effect inspired by the textures he found in Byzantine art.
He started painting volumetric forms along the lines of popular bazaar paintings sold outside the Kalighat temple in Kolkata. By the early 1930s, Roy made a complete switch to indigenous materials to paint on woven mats, cloth, and wood coated with lime. His lines and restrained and precise.
The Santhals, a tribal people who live in the rural districts of Bengal, were an important subject for Roy. He captured the qualities that are a part of the native folk painting and recombined them with those of his own. He fused the minimal brush strokes of the Kalighat style with elements of tribal art from Bengal. His interest in folk art carried deeper implications than just stylistic possibilities.
Roy’s rejection of the then-modern style of painting and his foray into the realm of Bengali folk paintings marked a new beginning in the history of Indian modern art. He often painted the mother and child, Radha, and the figure of Christ. These subjects were painted in simple two-dimensional forms, with flat color application and an emphasis on the lines. The main subjects were often enclosed within decorative borders with motifs in the background.
Roy held several exhibitions, and his works are found in various collections all over the world. In 1976, his works were declared national treasures by the Archaeological Survey of India, Ministry of Culture, Govt. of India. He was honored with the Viceroy’s Gold Medal in 1935 and the Padma Bhushan in 1954. He died in 1972 in Kolkata. He passed away in 1972.
Jamini Roy (Bengali: যামিনী রায়) (11 April 1887 – 24 April 1972) was an Indian painter. He was honoured with the State award of Padma Bhushan in 1954. He was one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, whose artistic originality and contribution to the emergence of art in India remains unquestionable.
Jamini Roy was born on 11 April 1887 into a moderately prosperous Kayastha family of land-owners in Beliatore village of the Bankura district, West Bengal. He was raised in an average middle-class, art loving household which ultimately influenced his future decisions.
When he was sixteen he was sent to study at the Government College of Art, Kolkata. Abanindranath Tagore, the founder of Bengal school was vice-principal at the institution. He was taught to paint in the prevailing academic tradition drawing Classical nudes and painting in oils and in 1908 he received his Diploma in Fine Art.
However, he soon realized that he needed to draw inspiration, not from Western traditions, but from his own culture, and so he looked to the living folk and tribal art for inspiration. He was most influenced by the Kalighat Pat (Kalighat painting), which was a style of art with bold sweeping brush-strokes. He moved away from his earlier impressionist landscapes and portraits and between 1921 and 1924 began his first period of experimentation with the Santhal dance as his starting point. Jamini Roy had 4 sons and 1 daughter.
Roy began his career as a commissioned portrait painter. Somewhat abruptly in the early 1920s, he gave up commissioned portrait painting in an effort to discover his own.
Roy changed style from his academic Western training and featured a new style based on Bengali folk traditions.
Roy is also described as an art machine because he produced 20,000 paintings in his lifetime which is about 10 paintings daily but made sure his artistic aims remained the same. He always targeted to the ordinary middle class as the upholder of art however he was thronged by the rich. Keeping his respect to the middle class reflected on his critical views; he believed that ordinary people were more important than governments because they were the voice of his art.
His underlying quest was threefold: to capture the essence of simplicity embodied in the life of the folk people; to make art accessible to a wider section of people; and to give Indian art its own identity. Jamini Roy's paintings were put on exhibition for the first time in the British India Street of Calcutta (Kolkata) in 1938. During the 1940s, his popularity touched new highs, with the Bengali middle class and the European community becoming his main clientele. In 1946, his work was exhibited in London and in 1953, in New York. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 1954. His work has been exhibited extensively in international exhibitions and can be found in many private and public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. He spent most of his life living and working in Calcutta. Initially he experimented with Kalighat paintings but found that it has ceased to be strictly a "patua" and went to learn from village patuas. Consequently, his techniques as well as subject matter was influenced by traditional art of Bengal.
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