Jamini Roy: A painter who revisited the roots

Jamini Roy: Revisiting Roots explores the remarkable career of the maestro right from the late 1910s till his very last days. It closely examines not only the steep bends of Roy’s art that culminated in his signature style, but also the very process through which he reconnected with his indigenous rootedness that later became the very bedrock of his more famous works. It engages in detail with the influence that the various forms of folk art wielded over him—not only the painted scrolls of indigenous patuas or the distinctive Kalighat pats, but also the temple murals of Bankura, terracotta figurines, floor art, even folk songs, dances and rituals—something that nourished and nurtured his identity. However, Roy’s located identity was mediated by the contemporary Modernist idiom, and the elements in his uniquely Bengal-based visual narratives are underpinned by a conscious intention to simplify, abbreviate, and thus reveal the essential, ‘significant’ form. It also addresses the plural lines of conflicts that underlie the very making of his art— between the urban and the rural, local and the global.

Told in a simple and engaging mode, the book explores the multiple facets of a man for whom art was both a livelihood and a meditative journey, and follows his life of disciplined simplicity along with his quirks and idiosyncrasies.