Artist's Profile

Born to the family of Tagore's of Jorasanko, Kolkata, Gaganendranath was the elder brother of Abanindranath Tagore. With little formal training in art Gaganendranath began painting at an advanced age. He was inspired by the calligraphic brushwork and the wash technique of the visiting Japanese artists, Yokoyama Taikan and Hishida Shunsho. In the early 20's of the Twentieth century, Gaganendranath responded positively to the European modernist idiom. He began painting seriously when he started illustrating his uncle Rabindranath Tagore's autobiography in 1911. Gaganendranath like his younger brother Abanindranath and uncle Rabindranath had a wide range of interests that covered theatre, fantasy and the like. He also practiced photography and this can be seen in the use of light and shadows in his paintings. From 1917 onwards he did a series of satirical caricatures of changes taking place in the society of his times. Many of his paintings were referred to as 'cubist' because of the division of the figures and ground into geometrical planes. Gaganendranath painted portraits, landscapes, caricatures, abstract and 'cubist' paintings.

Gaganendranath was closely associated with his brother Abanindra in the creation of the Revivalist School of Bengal. But he never allowed himself to be influenced by any of the traditions or styles of Indian art which a large number of artists of the country were following in the wake of this new art movement. He found guidance and the goal for his art in nature and in the environment around him, and produced paintings bearing a stamp of strong individuality. He took to painting seriously rather late, and remained an active painter for not many years, as a sudden illness incapacitated him for the last ten years of his life. But within this fairly short span of active life he was very prolific in producing sketches, drawings by the hundreds in pen and brush, and many water color paintings. From his early youth Gaganendranath had a regular habit of making quick and successful of fleeting gestures and expressions of people around him. So when he started painting in earnest his brush yielded mature works straight away.

His early paintings were landscapes – mainly from memory, and figure compositions, many of which illustrated the life story of Shri Chaitanyadeb. These compositions generally show line drawings in a background of soft tone and tinted with delicate colors. He also produced several caricatures in the vein of social satire. These were bold in conception and showed excellent draughtsmanship, but were without any malice or bitterness. They were produced almost as farces befitting the stage to amuse the spectator and make them laugh.

At the Tagore residence in Calcutta plays were written, staged and acted by the members of the family. Gaganendranath took part in these performances and proved himself a brilliant actor. Stage and drama must have influenced his mind profoundly, as his later paintings show an effect of stage settings and an atmosphere charged with the expectancy of the theater. From the hustle and bustle of the urban scene his vision seem to soar high into a dream land, where he could curtain off everything that was brutal and ugly, and focus an eerie light on some flight of steps, on the courtyards and parapets of a castle or on the palace of a fairy princess. Sometimes he used purely geometrical patterns in his paintings, but he never allowed himself to make a cult of it like the cubists. It was not his intention to produce these inanimate shapes as a kind of purposeless cerebral exercise. They all had a part to play in his pictures, and as we look, they seem to come to life and starts gliding, rolling and dancing before our eyes. Sometimes he would use these patterns just to produce a Kaleidoscopic effect of light, and make the glimmering rays to be deflected from facet to facet of pillars, pyramids and prisms and then to be swallowed up by semi-lucent or total darkness. In his fancy he would be a loan rider of a black horse, and visit forbidden castles or palaces of snow, or he would set out on a voyage in a dream boat in quest of far unknown lands beyond the sea. Before his gaze it seems that the visual world has lost many irrelevant details and familiar contours and that a gigantic metamorphosis has taken place. Perhaps he anticipated what was to follow after the Revivalist School. It is possible that he had a premonition before he was finally struck down by illness, for he showed us the shadow of death whispering into his ears before it drew the curtain over him. In the serenity and calmness that pervade all his works it was evident that he faced the end with courage and fortitude.