A self-portrait

The red, rough-hewn expanse of laterite that blended with the horizon in pre-housing boom Santiniketan, and the delicate plant and animal life that it nurtured come alive at the huge exhibition organised on the ground floor of the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi to celebrate the birth centenary of Benodebehari Mukherjee.

At the same time, the life of this celebrated artist and teacher of Kala Bhavan, who shunned the limelight and lost his sight at the peak of his career, unfolds before one’s eyes as one takes in the innumerable photographs, blow-ups and text displayed with much forethought in this exhibition.

According to Rajeev Lochan, director, NGMA, the exhibition will travel to Mumbai and then to Calcutta. It gives one a good idea of the stark vision of this sightless artist born in Behala in February 1904, who made a great impact on modern Indian art and was conferred the Deshikottama by Visva-Bharati in 1977 but whose works are rarely seen.

Nature is a constant presence in the works of this artist for whom details mattered as much as the sweeping views of the Birbhum landscape. That nature is not just the backdrop of his paintings but is the prime mover of the world that Benodebehari created becomes evident as one views this exhibition with about 300 works on display.

Gulammohammed Sheikh, an artist who teaches in Vadodara, and R. Shiva Kumar, a Santiniketan-based art historian, jointly curated this centenary retrospective exhibition which opened on December 30 and will continue till February 11. The five publications on Benodebehari, released on the occasion, are the fruits of their ceaseless labour.

To begin with, there is the catalogue, a lavishly illustrated 370-page tome with longish pieces by the two curators, an essay by K.G. Subramanyan, one of Benodebehari’s pupils, and extracts from the master’s writings. The others are on Benodebehari’s flower paintings by Nilima Sheikh, a general book on the artist for the layperson, a fourth on Benodebehari’s murals in Hindi Bhavan on the Visva-Bharati campus, and a fifth by Shiva Kumar on the scroll painting Khoai. These publications were financed in the main by Vadhera art gallery.

The exhibition takes one on a journey of various phases of Benodebehari’s career. There are the etchings and woodcuts where the interplay of shadow and light conjures up the herds of pigs, the hills of Mussourie and Nepal, the date palm trees, desolate and sombre like the reclusive artist himself, and self-portraits, in which he recreates himself as a hermit wearing owlish glasses, gazing intensely at the viewer; slouching in an armchair; clowning with a frog that he had caught; enjoying a drink with friends — usually litterateurs — or stooping over his work in the loneliness of his studio.

His travels in Japan, Nepal, Rajasthan and their influence on his work are carefully charted out here. There is a section on Benodebehari’s textile designs and the wood blocks he designed to make prints.

Benodebehari’s murals in Santiniketan have faded with time and neglect. Three rooms are devoted to his murals presented through photographic displays in actual size.

Most fascinating are his works done after he went blind. The bright paper cutouts, calligraphic works and sculptures are all here. They illuminate Benodebehari’s inner world.