Benode Behari Mukherjee

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Benod Behari Mukherjee
Contextual Modernism
SpouseLeela Mukherjee
ChildrenMrinalini Mukherjee
AwardsPadma Vibhushan (1974)
Rabindra Puraskar (1980)

Benode Behari Mukherjee (7 February 1904 – 11 November 1980) was an Indian artist from

Contextual Modernism
. He was one of the earliest artists in modern India to take up to murals as a mode of artistic expression. All his murals depict a subtle understanding of environmental through pioneering architectural nuances.

Early life

Binod Behari Mukherjee was born in

Santiniketan. He made his early learning from Sanskrit Collegiate School
.

Career

Mukherjee was born with a severe eye problem. Despite being myopic in one eye and blind in the other, he continued to paint and do murals even after he lost his eyesight completely following an unsuccessful eye

K.G. Subramanyan,[1] Beohar Rammanohar Sinha,[2] sculptor & printmaker Somnath Hore, designer Riten Majumdar and filmmaker Satyajit Ray. In 1949, he left Kala Bhavan and joined as a curator at the Nepal Government Museum in Kathmandu. From 1951 to 1952, he taught at the Banasthali Vidyapith in Rajasthan. In 1952, he along with his wife Leela, started an art training school in Mussoorie
. In 1958, he returned to Kala Bhavan, and later became its principal. In 1979, a collection of his Bengali writings, Chitrakar, was published.

In Oxford Art Online, R. Si'va Kumar claims, "His major work is the monumental 1947 mural at the Hindi Bhavan, Sha'ntiniketan, based on the lives of medieval Indian saints and painted without cartoons. With its conceptual breadth and synthesis of elements from Giotto and Tawaraya Sotatsu, as well as from the art of such ancient Indian sites as Ajanta and Mamallapuram, it is among the greatest achievements in contemporary Indian painting."[3]

Mukherjee's wife, Leela Mukherjee, collaborated on some of his work, such as a mural at Hindi Bhavan, Santiniketan, in 1947.[4]

Style

Untitled, 1952, Water color on paper, DAG Museums

His style was a complex fusion of idioms absorbed from Western modern art and the spirituality of oriental traditions (both Indian and Far-Eastern). Some of his works show a marked influence of Far-Eastern traditions, namely

Cubist techniques (such as multi-perspective and faceting of planes) to solve problems of space. He painted grand murals inside the Visva-Bharati campus. In 1948 he went to become director of National Museum of Kathmandu, in Nepal
. In the later years he went to Doon valley, where he started an art school but had to discontinue due to the financial shortage.

In 1972 Mukherjee's former student at Santiniketan, filmmaker Satyajit Ray, made a documentary film on him titled "The Inner Eye". The film is an intimate investigation of Mukherjee's creative persona and how he copes with his blindness being a visual artist.[1].

Awards and honors

In 1974, he received the

Visva Bharati University in 1977. He received the Rabindra Puraskar
in 1980.

Exhibitions

Personal life

In 1944, he married a fellow student, Leela Mukherjee.[5][6] In 1949, they had their only child, the artist Mrinalini Mukherjee.[7]

References

  1. ^ https://web.archive.org/web/20071115222055/http://www.mattersofart.com/bookreviewindex.html [bare URL]
  2. ^ "Beohar RAMMANOHAR Sinha".
  3. ^ "Mukherjee family".
  4. ^ Michael, Kristine (2018). "Idealism, Revival and Reform - Indian Pottery at the Crux of Craft, Art and Modern Industry". Marg: A Magazine of the Arts. 69 (2). Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  5. ^ "Leela Mukherjee". Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation. Archived from the original on 5 May 2023. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  6. ^ Gardner, Andrew (11 December 2019). "Mrinalini Mukherjee: Textile to Sculpture". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 1 May 2023.
  7. ISBN 978-81-942993-0-1
    . Retrieved 1 May 2023.

Further reading
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