8/10/2019 Nirad Majumdar

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Nirad Majumdar: a devalued genius of modern Indian art

Nirad Majumdar first went to Paris when he received a French government scholarship in 1946. InKolkata, he was a founder member of theCalcutta Group, the first progressive art group of India.Calcutta Group artists were trying to break away from the tradition of the dominating style oftheBengal School, instigated by the patriarch Abanindranath Tagore. By that time informationabout new developments and experiments of twentieth century European art was gradually

coming in and the Calcutta Group artists, influenced by the developments, started to change thecourse of the modern art in India. Nirad Majumdar became obsessed about French culture,particularly Paris, from his early days and when he ultimately landed there he at once embraced it.Paris in those days was the world art capital. Major painters and sculptors like Picasso, Braque,Matisse and Brancusi were at the helm of their artistic careers. Students and artists of differentcountries were flocking the Paris streets and boulevards, attending art courses in the Parisianacademies, studying masterpieces at Louver, assembling around the masters and endlesslydiscussing their ideas in the cafes and social gatherings. Majumdar quickly became one of them.

He was greatly influenced by Cezanne, became a close disciple of Brancusi and Braque andbefriended many contemporary intellectuals. At the same time he was a regular visitor to the

Parisian opera houses and theaters, met Picasso and Jean Genet, was reading Balzac, Baudelaireand Rimbaud and was deeply impressed by the modern French poetry. He was actually suggested

by a noble French lady to read French love poems to learn the French language better which hespoke fluently.

But among all these activities Nirad Majumdar was searching his own artistic language. Herealized soon that the modern formalism which he had closely observed in Paris, cannot give him adistinctive identity until he travels back to his Indian roots. After a deliberate search he finallyended up rediscovering the symbols and images of Tantra. He tried to make a synthesis of westernform and Tantric symbolism and ultimately developed a unique style of painting, rich in idea andform. He held his first exhibition in Paris, in the year 1949, traveled to Holland and Britain and

returned to India in 1958.

Majumdar started teaching art in Kolkata and later was the Principal of a Kolkata art college. Heexhibited regularly; his shows were thematic representation of ideas with poetic names like ImageEclogue, Wings of no End, or Nine Variations of Symbolic Nine. He revisited France again in1977 and 78 but was bitter to see the changed face of Paris where the studio of ConstantinBrancusi, the man he highly respected, was destroyed and converted into a motor garage. He wrotean extraordinary memoir after his return, Punoshcho Pari (Paris Revisited). The book, written inBengali, had glittering observations and anecdotes on French cultural life and personalities. Hislanguage was also inimitably original, full of lyrical imagery even when he was addressing ordinarysubjects. Majumdar passed away on September 26, 1982. Punoshcho Pari was published after his

death.

Nirad Majumdar is one of the most devalued painters of modern India. Today, in the boom andhype of modern Indian art we have almost forgotten this man.