Ranen Ayan Dutt’s sketch for the famous Jabakusum campaign

Ranen Ayan Dutt is still remembered by Calcuttans of a certain age for his eye-catching ad campaigns for a hair oil named Jabakusum that used to be as popular among Bengalis as Boroline still is today. One of the most famous ones was of a lovely Bengali woman in a brown study lolling on her bed with her long black tresses caressing her dainty shoulders. The Ranen Ayan Dutt girl was a typical modern Bengali girl of the 1960s and the 1970s, the very picture of grace in her sari and full figure — alluring but not sexualised in a blatant fashion. Dutt has in recent times designed the archive of the State Bank of India on Strand Road.

The veteran artist’s works can be seen on the third floor of Metropolis Mall in Hiland Park on the EM Bypass. It is small but neatly mounted show. Dutt was first an artist and then an adman, and there is ample evidence here of his mastery of lines and colour. Many of these paintings and line drawings are already well known, but the famous ad campaigns of the times when the print media was black and white could be of interest to young people who drop by for film shows at the mall.

The oldest work dates back to 1943, when he did a watercolour of a waterfall, followed by another done in the same medium in 1945 of a wizened old woman using the minimum of shades.

There are several landscapes and cityscapes in oils as well, and not to forget the serialised advertisements in which he told stories through pictures. There are besides, sketches and cover illustrations of magazines. The organisers are handing out folders showing Ranen Ayan Dutt’s work, and one wishes they had added a biographical note to it.

Gallery K2 is holding a small exhibition of watercolours of city artists, many of whom take to this medium like a duck does to water. Tapas Kanti Mitra’s pictures of forests and boats provide adequate evidence of his skill but haven’t these been done to death? Paresh Maity has even greater mastery over his craft, but he too shows boats in a river.

Katayun Saklat’s portraits and flowers stand out because her colours are fresh and she has a distinctive style that cannot ever be mistaken for anybody else’s.

The 150th birth anniversary of Tagore has triggered a flash flood of exhibitions and book launches based on the Rabindranath theme. Akar Prakar has gone a step ahead, taking an entire exhibition of the works of Calcutta artists inspired by the poet to Munich and later Berlin.

The exhibition is being organised in collaboration with the Indien-Institut eV, Munich, along with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations from next month. The works of 13 artists will be exhibited and most have chosen to respond to the theme in a literal manner — each work either has a portrait of the poet or lines from his verse in case viewers don’t get the point. Wonder how the poet would have reacted to such slavishness.