A retrospective is an exciting and profound affair for the artist as well as the viewer. It brings to the fore the entire oeuvre of an artist’s work over the entirety of their career. To accumulate and display the work of a prolific and brilliant artist along a singular time and space axis wherein sixty years of art practice comes together in that one panoramic space from which each canvas becomes a visual determinant of a moment in the passage of time, is indeed the remarkable achievement of the Jatin Das Retrospective: 1963-2023. Rarely does one witness a retrospective that embodies its truest and most profound meaning. Jatin Das’s retrospective unquestioningly belongs to this remarkable category.

The retrospective exudes glittering insights into the artist’s evolution and his fascination with certain themes, images and motifs. It also unearths from the deep recesses of memories, as well as the artist’s studio, earlier artworks that were lost or simply forgotten. Jatin Das’s retrospective is indeed the spatial imagination of the passage of time, as if the years and years of art practice brushed that time itself onto the canvas. The strong dynamic and energetic artistic style permeates the gallery space to bestow a feeling of rhythm and movement to the space. Here the earliest works of Jatin Das as a student, to his portraits, human figures, landscapes, drawings, in various media are displayed to sublime effect.
The entire array of artworks is a testimony to the tremendous zest and vigour of the artist. The gallery reverberates with the kinaesthetic forms, the body stopped in a momentary caesura or the dizzying effects of the body in motion, the portraits gallery shows each visage as a perfect illustration of the artists involvement and his sheer talent, both raw, and honed into his unique artistic style.

Jyoti A. Kathpalia (JK): It is indeed a matter of great honour and privilege to be having a conversation. It has been a long journey from Mayurbhanj, Odisha where you were born to here, today where one of the most impactful and profound retrospective at NGMA is attracting people from all walks of life. Could you tell us how it all began? And your journey from Odisha to Delhi.

Jatin Das (JD): I was an ordinary student in school. I spent most of my time swimming in the river, working in the garden and drawing wherever, whenever. As the middle child, I was neglected, and that became my freedom. I was called Pagla at home. I wanted to learn art but my elders insisted, so I did biology in college. What I enjoyed the most was drawing frogs and other animals given for dissection. I also drew them for many of my classmates.

In my hometown, art was a way of life. I had a fantastic Guru, Biranchi Narayan Mohanty, who was also a poet, a cook and did gardening. He taught me painting and yoga. When in college, a friend told me about JJ School of Art in Bombay. I applied but didn’t get a reply. One day in Bhubaneswar I met Julius Vaz, the great architect who designed the city. He helped me get into Sir JJ School of Architecture. I left for Bombay by train with just Rs 500. I was late by two months. But after the Dean saw my sketches, he gave me admission immediately. In a few months I shifted to the Fine Arts department.
Sir JJ School of Art was an unbelievable work space. We had Michelangelo’s replica on one side and a 40-feet skyline on the other. We were asked to submit ten sketches a day but I decided to do 300. Wherever I went, I sketched. By evening, if 300 were not done, I would make my left hand a model in different positions and sketch it! We were exposed to a wide range of art materials, values, concepts, and methods at JJ. All our professors were masters, especially S B Palsikar.

In 1959, while I was still a student, I had a studio at Bhulabhai Memorial Institute in Bombay. A year later, senior artists like Gaitonde and Hussain also had their studios there. Pt. Ravi Shankar and BK Iyengar, the great yoga teacher, had their classes. Jatin (Rajesh Khanna) and Harihar Jariwala (Sanjeev Kumar) rehearsed their plays. It was a vibrant place where we shared our work openly with each other, Without any hierarchy of younger or older. I had many solo shows in galleries like Jehangir, Chemould, Pandole and Taj Art Gallery.
In 1966, Pupul Jaykar, the great cultural revivalist of handloom and crafts invited me to Delhi to become an art consultant for the Handicraft and Handloom Export Corporation. At that time, Kumar Art Gallery in Delhi was one of the most respected and known galleries in the country. They began to show my work. I lived in Nizamuddin, where in a radius of 2 km, many artists, poets, writers and musicians lived. We would go unannounced to each other’s homes and shows or concerts. Till late 80s, it was a wonderful time. In the last 20 years, there is more talk about art markets and art business than about the art itself.

JK: You have been awarded the prestigious Padma Bhushan and your large painting The Journey of India Mohenjo-Daro to Mahatma Gandhi graced the Indian parliament New Delhi. Please do tell us about it.

JD: In 2001, I was commissioned to do a 7ft X 68ft long mural titled The Journey of India: From Mohenjo-daro to Mahatma Gandhi at the Parliament House in New Delhi, which is now called the Samvidhan Sadan. Before plunging into it, I met historians, read several books and did many sketches to immerse myself and learn more about the journey of our country. It was inaugurated by the then Prime Minister, Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee. And attended by Mrs. Sonia Gandhi and Mr. L.K. Advani.

JK: Coming to your artistic oeuvre you exhibit a proclivity to oils, watercolour, ink and conte and have been consistent with these mediums for decades. Any comments? Also, you have also done various sculptures, serigraphs, etchings and murals. Any observations on the above?

JD: I am a painter, wanting to become an artist. Ram Kinkar Baij is a true and total artist. While I primarily paint with watercolour, ink and oil and draw with conté and ink, I also like playing with other mediums, but I dislike acrylic as it changes colour when it dries. But sometimes I paint with it for vengeance. I have also done sculptures, murals, ceramics, terracotta platters and even small figurines. I respect every medium. In painting, there is also drawing. In drawing, there is also sculpting. It is a matter of creating negative and positive spaces. Each medium can be rewarding or limiting, depending on how you handle it. Sometimes the thought decides the medium and sometimes the medium inspires the work. When I have an idea and I see a larger picture emerging around it, then I dive into it. Knowing well that it may not get completed in my lifetime, yet I pursue my instinct, my passion, my concern.

JK: We would also like to know about your predilection for the human form and the tremendous energy and dynamism that you infuse these with. It has been a muse for your art. Any comments.

JD: My interest in figurative art started in JJ. The anatomy professor there was impressed with my figurations and took me to the hospital to see the human dissections to learn about muscles and bones. Now having studied gestures or movements deeply, I can play with them in my own way when I draw and paint. I can place a palm on the thigh without drawing the arm. I take this liberty with many limbs, in a minimal way, to express the mood.
My figures are not doing any day-to-day activity. They are just experiencing themselves, engrossed in a poetic, esoteric way. My figures are bare, beyond any context of time and place. I usually don’t have any other elements of architecture or foliage or any element that makes it localised. Some people call them nudes. They’re not, as they have never been clothed and therefore never disrobed. If you look at sculptures in temples, or Michelangelo’s paintings, or any figurative art, you will know that it is about body rhythm. To understand the rhythmic structure of the key line in every body’s movement is important. My figures are normally single, sometimes two and seldom more. There is no real reason why I do that. Maybe because I am a loner. The concepts, ideas and themes in my work are personal. My convictions, concerns and commitments are rooted in my culture, yet they don’t define me.

JK: One of the most incredible aspects of your art is the portrait gallery and the number of portraits that you have done over the past years. Please tell us about this.

JD: I began doing portraits from the JJ days. I do them when I have some connection to the person, mostly of friends and people I know. Ideally, I like to spend enough time with them, and when I draw them, I look at them intensely. A portrait is not a documentation and likeness to the person is only a part of it. It is more about capturing the essence of the person. Only then does a portrait become a work of art. Though sometimes, I also like to do quick portraits of strangers– of a shopkeeper, a waiter, a house help, or anyone that catches my eye. I carry my sketch book everywhere I travel. So, I have many portraits in other countries, such as in Russia, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Japan, Bali and most recently in China. In the recent past, I have been mostly doing portraits in conté or pen and ink, since oil needs a few weeks to dry. Unless it is commissioned, no one has the time for it.

JK: You are an immense organiser and collector. You maintain records with astounding meticulousness. The artist and the collector in you perhaps found its resonance in the exquisite pankha collection that you have. Please share your thoughts with us.

JD: My pankha collection started with a rather fun incident more than four decades ago. On a summer afternoon, a friend came over to my studio in Nizamuddin. He was in a woeful mood. To cheer him up, I picked up a pankha and said with mock seriousness, ‘Let me stir the still air.’ From then on it became my obsession. Also, because each hand fan has a story behind it. I have sourced fans from village haats, from homes, city bazaars and antique stores. I searched for pankhas when I visited different countries like Africa, the Middle East, Far Eastern countries like China, Korea and Japan, South East Asian countries like Indonesia and, nearer home, from Nepal and Sri Lanka. Many of my friends have also gifted, knowing my junoon of pankhas. The collection over the years expanded to include paintings, miniatures, photographs, prints and poems related to the pankha.
My first pankha exhibition debuted at the Crafts Museum in 2004. It travelled to Kolkata’s Victoria Memorial, museums in London, Zurich, Kuala Lumpur, Manila and to the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC. More recently a show was held at the IGNCA. We have made documentaries on the craft of pankha making and a collection of pankha poems was recently published by the Sahitya Akademi.
But from hand fans, my interest and concern expanded to preserve many different traditional and folk arts and crafts. Slowly my house and studio became so cluttered, that I had to set up an art centre to store them. That is how the JD Centre of Art got founded.

JK: Hearing about your journey in a recent talk I was struck by your strong sentiments about dwindling of traditions, heritage and art. Please give us your views.

JD: I am deeply inspired and influenced by our rich traditional and folk-art forms. It is sad that those artists remain faceless and nameless and are called artisans. While most modern and contemporary artists are known more by their names and signatures than their art. Today there are many influences that are taking us away from our rich cultural heritage. To be traditionally rooted, does not mean to be parochial. It is to derive inspiration, to learn from the place, language, people and ethos that one belongs to. Unfortunately, we are aping the West blindly. We can take the best from everywhere and yet retain what is special in our tradition. When we talk of a brass bowl or an Ikkat weave, they are to be preserved not only because it’s traditional and will vanish if they are not used or worn, but these great artistic expressions also sustain communities who make it. Sadly, many of their next generation are unable to continue it and are forced to become migrant workers. Handmade crafts and hand-woven textiles are an intrinsic part of our rich Indian culture.

JK: You have been actively involved in the pedagogy of art and have been the visiting professor in many institutions nationally and internationally. Could you tell us about your experience?

JD: I taught for 9 years at the Jamia Millia Islamia University starting in 1977. Apart from that I was also a visiting faculty at the School of Planning and Architecture and National School of Drama in New Delhi, and other universities in India and abroad. I actually love teaching and interacting with young people. My attempt has always been to expose them to our folk and traditional arts and crafts and be more observant of nature. I also believe that there should be no art competition. Students should be given the freedom to imagine and create what their inner mind says. To learn, unlearn, and then do what comes instinctively to them.
The so-called modern education system has created too many divisions. Today, a dancer is not exposed to sculpture or painting and the architecture student studies Le Corbusier, but has not seen the monuments, temples and other indigenous buildings that are in sync with the topography and climate of that region. Sadly, various forms of arts are disjointed and completely divorced from life. A teacher in school draws a mango instead of taking the student to a mango grove to smell, draw, and then eat the mango.

JK: You are also an accomplished poet; do you think that there is an interconnection between these expressions of creativity?

JD: Each form of art shares aspects with the others because poetics and musicality are inherent in all aspects of life and art. The ecstasy and the poetry of a line transcends tone and colour. My mother recollected that she used to draw as a child. While she didn’t continue it, she wrote poems all her life, on little scraps of paper or used envelopes and would put them under the mattress. So it must have been in my genes as I began writing poetry from a very early age. I also became a founding member of the Bombay Poetry Group, where poets such as Nissim Ezekiel, Adil Jussawala, Geive Patel, Arun Kolatkar, Dilip Chitre, Arvind Krishna Mehrotra and I met regularly at Café Samovar in Jehangir Art Gallery. A book of my poems was published a few decades ago. I am slowly organising them as I plan to bring out a book of poetry soon.

JK: There are so many aspects to your involvement with art and lifelong love and involvement with art. JD Centre of art being one of the, please tell us about it.

JD: Yes, it has been a lifelong passion and concern to collect, preserve traditional and folk arts of mainly India. I have been collecting art, rare and dying crafts and antiquities for nearly half a century. I needed a place to store them. About 25 years ago an acre of land was offered to me by the Odisha Government for a studio, but I decided to set up the JD Centre of Art instead. The art centre will exhibit folk, tribal, classical and contemporary arts, all under one roof.

It faces the magnificent and ornately carved 2nd C BC Khandagiri caves and is easily accessible on NH5, the National Highway. The eminent Indian architect and Pritzker prize winner, BV Doshi was the master planner and its principal architect. The building is almost done, and we hope to be able to open it next year.

The Centre will be a place where somebody who walks in will learn about drawing, handicrafts, architecture, photography, conservation, pottery, handlooms and more. There will be an emporium from where you can take back a little of what you have been exposed to. There will be a café with local food. In the open-air amphitheatre, we will have poetry reading, seminars, interactions with artists and maybe even children’s workshops. We will have artist residencies for eminent and emerging artists. But to realise this dream I need many to join hands, to contribute. I am donating my large and diverse collection and have spent most of my time, money and energy on it. But it has been an uphill task.

JK: Finally, please elucidate to us what you think of art and the role of the artist today. And any concluding remarks and words of advice that you would like to share.

JD: Art is a primal human activity. It can be traced back to the earliest times when there were cave paintings. It is essential for human beings to express and share. Each one chooses a different means maybe. And I am first a human being and then an artist so I have to ask myself, what is my role as a person, as a citizen, before I ask what is my role as an artist. We all have to live with care for each other. I have deep human concerns and they organically find their way into my work. I don’t plan what I am going to paint. I intuitively respond to the moment. For instance, the Labourer Exodus series was a spontaneous response to what I saw in the papers and TV during the Covid times. Like everyone else, I was stuck at home during the lockdown. I was restless at home. I had 200 odd acid-free papers, some ink pots and lots of brushes. So I began painting what was deeply disturbing me – thousands of migrant workers walked barefoot, some on cycles and others atop buses, under the scorching sun, without food and water. They went with their belongings tucked under their arms or on their heads. Men and women carried their children on their shoulders, in their tired arms, in baskets, walking quietly, non-stop. Some had to wait endlessly for help. These images are etched in my mind.

My daughter, Nandita was part of Safdar’s street play group during college. I was deeply shocked and pained when Safdar, a wonderful human being and a fellow artist was brutally killed. So the painting was born out of that anguish. Sometimes it is a more direct response, but mostly it is more metaphorical and subconscious. The human concern is more important than just the politics of things.

JK: Thank you so very much for your time and for the privilege of this conversation.

About the artist
Jatin Das is a painter, poet, sculptor, muralist, print-maker, teacher, cultural expert and Founder Chairman of JD Centre of Art. Born in December 1941 in Mayurbhanj, Odisha in India, Das at 17, went to study at Sir JJ School of Art, Bombay, under Prof. S.B. Palsikar. Since then, Das has held over 71 one-man shows. He has participated in numerous exhibitions, biennales and artist camps nationally and internationally including the Venice and Tokyo Biennale. His works are primarily in oil, watercolour, ink and conté. He has done several sculptures, graphics, murals and installations and as a printmaker, many etchings, dry point, lithographs and serigraphs. Over the years, he has also designed many postal stamps for the Philately Department. Das is a member of the Poetry Society of India, New Delhi.
In 2012 he was conferred the prestigious Padma Bhushan, one of the highest civilian awards in the country, presented by the President of India. He has also been awarded the D. Litt. by various universities including Rabindra Bharti University in Kolkata. His works have been featured in several public and private collections in India and abroad and have been auctioned by major international auctioneers. His large painting ‘The Journey of India: Mohenjo-Daro to Mahatma Gandhi’ (7x68ft), is at the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and was inaugurated in 2001 by the then Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Jatin Das has been a visiting professor at various universities in India and abroad. In New Delhi, he was in the art faculties at Jamia Milia Islamia University, College of Art and the School of Planning and Architecture. He has been a featured speaker at numerous art and architecture institutions, museums and public forums, such as the National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), Victoria Albert Museum (London) and Harvard University (USA) among others; sharing his experiences and knowledge of contemporary and traditional art forms. He has served as an advisor to many government and private cultural bodies. He has donated his works to several charities and social causes. He actively supported the reconstruction and rehabilitation work after the super cyclone in Odisha in 1999.
Das’s commitment to preserve the arts and crafts led him to the dream of setting up the JD Centre of Art. The Centre, which is under construction in Odisha, will house classical, modern, traditional and folk art, all under one roof. His 40-year collection of modern art, antiquities, handicrafts, handlooms and art books will be donated to the Centre. It includes 6000 Pankhas, one of the largest private collections of hand-fans, some of which have been exhibited in national and international museums.
During the lockdown, Jatin Das created a series of 200 ink paintings about the mass migration of labourers. Selected works from it were exhibited at Art Alive, Delhi, titled Exodus 2020. Then in 2022, a one-man show, titled, Prakruti Purush, was held at the Archer Gallery in Ahmedabad and at then at Jehangir Art Gallery and Art and Soul in Mumbai. The most recent was a large One – man show in 2023 at the Bihar Museum. (www.jatindas.com)

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