DAG's acquisition of the artist's Kolkata home is not just about preserving his legacy, but setting an example for future, similar initiatives
Tucked away in a quiet, bylane of Kolkata’s Ballygunge neighbourhood stands a house that, for many from the city, might feel like home. Its pale pink walls are offset by green, wooden window shutters, a central stairwell overlooks the road through glass panes, and trees flank the structure on all sides. Representative of homes that were built in the city in the 1940s and 1950s, the house would perhaps be quite unremarkable, had it not been for the fact that it had been the home and studio of one of India’s most prolific and popular modernist painters, Jamini Roy.Born to a landowning family in 1887 in Beliatore in Bengal’s Bankura district, Roy studied European academic-realist painting at the Government School of Arts and Crafts in Calcutta, where Abanindranath Tagore was vice principal. He began his career painting landscapes and portraits, but soon started experimenting with a more indigenous visual vocabulary. Level surfaces, flattening of design in-depth, and the use of dissonant primary colours were aspects of folk painting that Roy incorporated in his work. Also, he took up the volumetric forms of the Kalighat patachitras.