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| A painting by late Bhupen Hazarika, which is on display at the exhibition. Telegraph picture |
Jorhat, Sept. 25: A kaleidoscope of dabs, daubs, dots and dribbles of black on white canvas greets one on entering the gallery of Jorhat Fine Arts Society here.
The exhibition, aptly titled Black Drizzle, brings together the works of 41 artists hailing from Assam, who have come together from all parts of the country to create art for art’s sake.
It also has a rare painting of late Bhupen Hazarika.
Sundar Saikia, an art teacher of Post-Graduate Training College and one of the organisers of the exhibition, said the paintings have been made with the concept of cave drawings in mind.
“Our earliest artists were people who lived in crude shelters or caves 30,000 to 40,000 years ago and expressed their feelings through cave drawings. They did not have any message to convey and drew whatever they saw or felt like drawing,” Saikia said.
Such drawings can be seen at Bhimbetka near Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh, at Bareily and in some places of the South.
“These drawings, mostly of animals or hunting scenes, were pure expressions, and are not true to dimension or shape,” he added.
Saikia said these earliest creative expressions were art in their pure form.
Later, they turned out to be of immense historical value, as these help to infer what the earlier artists did, how they lived and the extent of their scientific knowledge in the preservation of such drawings and other artefacts.
“If the paintings currently on display are lost, the loss will be minuscule, compared to the loss of those drawings,” he said.
The paintings at the exhibition, which mostly use pencil, crayon, dry pastel, watercolours, pen and ink and charcoal, are also creative expressions of the artist, expressing feelings without any didactic messages.
An album of the creations, dedicated to Bhupen Hazarika, lists the names of the contemporary artists brought together by Deben Dewan, an artist from Assam who currently resides in Calcutta.
In the introduction of the album he writes, “We have brought our creations together in black and white and we hope these paintings will give a comprehensive picture of our creativity. It has been left to the viewer to find the aesthetic value.”
A three-day workshop will also be held along with the seven-day exhibition. Noni Borpuzari, Debanand Ulup and Kishore Das will be the resourcepersons.
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