A COMPARATIVE BEGINNING Of MODERNISM IN THE ART Of ASSAM: WIth focus on SobhA Brahma
Rishav Gandhar Narzary

Since the initiation and development of indigenous art historical studies in Indian modern art, mostly in the post-independence scenario, the ramification of modern practices in Indian art have been streamlined to two principal sections of artists, mostly dealing with the ones from Bengal and of the majoritarian western society of the country. On the other hand the development of modern art in Assam is not very old, it had emerged only after the third decade of twentieth century without the legacy of Colonial art traditions, unlike it was in the art scene at Madras, Calcutta, Lahore and other Colonial cities of the country. No art school was established either by Colonial rulers or state Government. Few Assamese artists were trained to work in western style of painting under the influence of western academic school since 1930’s. The first private art school had been started by Jibeswar Baruah in 1947 and in 1950s another private art school was established by Shobha Brahma which was later undertaken by the Assam Government to run a Diploma course under the banner of Govt. School of Art and Craft. The artist of Assam who had been working in the early period of modern art of Assam had their training in art schools like Bombay J.J. School of Art, Government School of Art and Craft of Calcutta and Kala Bhavana of Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. Individual artists had been working independently in various corners of the cities of Assam and few in other states too. In Assam no artists’ group was formed to initiate art movements like the Calcutta Artist Group, Bombay Progressive Group, Delhi Shilpi Chakra in 1940s and 50s.

Factually the unprecedented and quintessential history of Bengal School remains as the foundation of Indian modernity during early 20th century which continued to the avant-garde stylistic artistic practices in the works of Ramkinkar Baij and Binode Bihari Mukherjee, establishing the very independent nature of modernism in art. Undeniably the formations of the Calcutta Artist Group and Bombay School of Artists in 1940s in the true sense brought in the occidental idiom of contemporary modern art within the indigenous art practices rather genetically mixing and altering the radical structure of the Indian creative instinct itself. The names like Raza, Souza, Husain, Ram Kumar and Tayeb Mehta are accounted synonymous with the evolution of the distinctive language of modernity under the light of Western modernism. Even during later 1960s and 70s artists like K. G. Subramanyan, Ganesh Payne and Bikash Bhattacharya became the torch bearers of experimental modernity associated with individually stylised Indian art practices


The impact of modern art movement was not immediate in India, it was adapted late in the second decade of the 20th century prevalently, first in the paintings of three individual artists, Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore and Abanindranath Tagore. Gaganendranath adapted the Cubistic idiom and surreal imagery features of the then contemporary western modern movements but he also rather internalized those styles in an indigenous manner- which reveals a mind that is both boldly experimental and also critically introspective and introverted at the same time. Rabindranath emerged as a painter at the age of 60 mainly through experimenting with spontaneous creative extensions of his writing and scribbling and thus by developing his innovative new language of creating both eclectic and personalised images imbued with the spirit of universal modernism, that is strongly and individually adapted from both the western and far eastern expressions – even related to folk, tribal and child arts, through which he developed more personalised and instinctive methods of graphic and figurative distortions, only for the sake of instinctive reflections of self-personality. The sublime, mystical and simplistically distorted expressions of his portraits and landscapes directly convey the psychological uniqueness of his modern language

On the other hand Abanindranath Tagore was committed to the spirit of Indian traditional stylised languages and to their minute poetic and aesthetic mannerism along with a grade of nationalism, based on which the Bengal School had emerged to counter the Western tradition of art popularly practiced in the art schools under Colonial Government. Abanindranath’s style was far reaching in the context of revivalism, nationalism and Indianness in context of arguments and counter arguments of Westernization in Modern Indian art and on the contrary he rather propagated the Pan Asian idea of Okakura in his own experimental practice by merging the far eastern technique of wash painting within the minimal stylised figurative and narrative nuances of Mughal miniatures and literary illustrations. His best-known series of paintings capturing the sensitivity of Indian traditionalism with a poetic space of stylised privatisation is certainly the Arabian Nights, and another popular representation of Bharat Mata (Mother India), who is depicted as a young indigenous saintly woman, portrayed in the manner of Hindu deities, holding objects symbolic of India’s national aspirations, rather emphatically, was associated with the nationalist biases of the time. In fact, the emergence of the three Tagores was based on contrasting the background of European academic tradition. All the three Tagores had rejected the European academic style of art and developed new idioms and expressions of their own to be modern, integrally contributing to a rich heritage of art and culture of Bengal.