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Before the invention
of photography, the primary commissions for the European artists
used to be for portrait making. But with the coming of photography,
the art of portrait making have taken a back seat. Yet artists are
known to make portraits of their associates, and themselves often to
reveal their own impressions of the persons.
Nandalal Bose had tried to show his deep
respect for his guru
Abanindranath Tagore
in the later's portrait.
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Nandalal
Bose's portrait of his Guru Abanindranath Tagore |
Similar portraits have also
been made by Ramkinkar Baij for his
Guru Nandalal Bose . while none of
these portarist have been the true image of the subjects, they had
been hailed for their expression of true feelings of the artist
Bikash Bhattacharya
had been another artist who had many portraits but in colours and
postures of his own imaginings. Thus portrait
making in the modern times is not so much concerned with perfection but
more with what the painting conveys about the subject.
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Self Portrait of
Ravindranath Tagore |
Other
artists in Bengal like
Ganesh Paine,
Sunil Das
and modern day
artists like Paresh Maity have however refrained from making much of
self-portraits. Thus except for a few self portraits of
Rabindranath Tagore , we see only Paritosh Sen and
Shakti Burman
among the modern painters who use self
portrait so often in his works.
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Paritosh Sen one of the surviving greats of the prestigious
Calcutta Group of yesteryear, was born in 1918 in Dhaka, now in
Bangladesh
, in 1918. From
childhood itself Sen was drawn towards art so much so that he ran away
from home against family wishes to join the Madras Art School.
There he met some of the future stalwarts of Indian Art
including K.C.S. Panicker and
Prodosh
Dasgupta
. Later for some time he taught art at Indore. |
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Sen was
the founder of the
Calcutta Group
in the 1940s. This was in those days more successful as a group than the
Progressive Artists Group of Bombay and in a way it showed the way to
younger artists to form their own Artists’ groups in Calcutta. In 1949, Sen left for Europe. In Paris, he studied at Andre Lhote's school,
Academie Grand Chaumier, Ecole des Beaux Arts and Ecole des Louvre.
During this time he had the opportunity to meet Pablo Picasso who had
left an indelible impression on the young artist.
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Two very different
works of Paritosh Sen. It is not easy to identify Sen's works except
those where a self portrayed is present (as in the right). |
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But even though he had impressive degrees, and recognition
life had never been easy for Sen. He had to work in schools as
art teacher, in a college as professor of designing, then was
commissioned by the French government to design Bengali
typography based on the script of
Rabindranath Tagore
. Tagore’s work has also shown great mark on the
artist.
Because of the changes in life and the shifting positions he
held, Paritosh Sen’s style never remained the same and it is
not possible to categorise his works into any specific
art genre
.
Medium and
techniques of Work
Sen has experimented in various media from
oil and
water-colour
to
etching, to even acrylic which is quite rare for an artist of his
generation.
Major
Themes
Though it is difficult to identify the major themes in Sen’s works, as
over a span of more than sixty years he has painted on variety of
subjects, certain images have found some recurrence. These are his own
self image and Picasso’s paintings modified to suit his own works
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