| Jogen Chowdhury Jogen
Chowdhury was born in a village near Kotaliparha at Faridpur district at what is now
Bangladesh in 1939. The family moved to Calcutta in 1947 following the Partition of
Bengal. Chowdhury entered the Government College of Art and Crafts in 1955 and graduated
from the college in 1960.
Chowdhury's first job was as an art teacher in a school in Howrah. He taught
there for two years and then in 1962, he joined a textile designer in the Handloom Board
In 1965, Chowdhury went to Paris and studied in Ecole des Beaux Arts and in William
Hayter's Atelier 17. He returned to Indian in early 1968 and went to Madras as a textile
designer in the Handloom Board. He stayed there for four years till 1972. His first book
of poems was published in 1970. The same year he joined the Calcutta Painters Group.
Chowdhury moved to Delhi in 1972 as the curator of the art collection at
Rashtrapati Bhawan. In 1975, he along with some leading Delhi artists founded Gallery 26
and Artists' Forum. From 1976, onwards, Chowdhury participated in several exhibitions and
art camps abroad. He published ajoumal called Art Today in 1981 with Shuvaprasanna. In
1987, Chowdhury joined Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan as professor of painting. Besides his
numerous activities, Chowdhury has written extensively on contemporary art.
Always a powerful artist, Chowdhury developed his individual style after his
return from France in the late '60s. Although Chowdhury has painted oils, his forte is
painting in ink, water colour and pastel. The sinuous line contouring the flaccid figures,
the crosshatching to achieve tonal variations distinguish C'howdhury's paintings which
show men and women m enigmatic situations with provocative gestures placed in a dark
dream- space. There is a bit of the theatre of the absurd. Chowdhury lives and works in
Sandniketan. |

Jogen Chowdhury
Moonstruck
Ink & pastel on paper
40" x 39"
1995

Jogen Chowdhury
Life II
Ink & pastel on paper/Board
60" x 61"
1976

Jogen Chowdhury
The Blue Saree
Oil on Canvas
72" x 72"
1995

Jogen Chowdhury
Couple
Oil on Canvas
48" x 48"
1995 |