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Benod Behari Mukherjee | |
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| Born | 7 February 1903 |
| Died | 11 November 1980 (aged 76) India |
| Known for | Painting |
| Movement | Contextual Modernism |
| Spouse | Leela Mukherjee |
| Children | Mrinalini Mukherjee |
| Awards | Padma Vibhushan (1974) Rabindra Puraskar (1980) |
Benode Behari Mukherjee (7 February 1904 – 11 November 1980) was anIndian artist fromWest Bengal state. Mukherjee was one of the pioneers of Indian modern art and a key figure ofContextual Modernism. He was one of the earliest artists in modern India to take up to murals as a mode of artistic expression. All hismurals depict a subtle understanding of environmental through pioneering architectural nuances.
Binod Behari Mukherjee was born inBehala, in Kolkata although his ancestral village wasGaralgachha inHooghly District. He taught atVisva Bharati University inSantiniketan. He made his early learning fromSanskrit Collegiate School.
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 eyecataract operation in 1956. In 1919, he took admission inKala Bhavana, the art faculty of Visva-Bharati University. He was a student of Indian artistNandalal Bose, and a friend and associate ofRamkinkar Baij, a sculptor. In 1925, he joinedKala Bhava Bijn as a member of the teaching faculty. His notable students included painterJahar Dasgupta, Ramananda Bandopadhyay,K.G. Subramanyan,[1]Beohar Rammanohar Sinha,[2] sculptor & printmakerSomnath Hore, designer Riten Majumdar and filmmakerSatyajit Ray. In 1949, he leftKala Bhavan and joined as a curator at the Nepal Government Museum in Kathmandu. From 1951 to 1952, he taught at theBanasthali Vidyapith in Rajasthan. In 1952, he along with his wife Leela, started an art training school inMussoorie. In 1958, he returned toKala Bhavan, and later became its principal. In 1979, a collection of his Bengali writings,Chitrakar, was published.
InOxford 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 asAjanta andMamallapuram, 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]
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, namelycalligraphy and traditionalwash techniques of China and Japan. He took lessons in calligraphy from travelling artists from Japan. During 1937-38 he spent a few months in Japan with artists such as Arai Kampō. Similarly he also learnt from the Indian miniature paintings in the frescoes of Mughal and Rajput periods. Idioms of Western modern art also bore heavily upon his style, as he is often seen to blendCubist 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, inNepal. 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, filmmakerSatyajit 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].
In 1974, he received thePadma Vibhushan award. He was conferred with theDeshikottama by theVisva Bharati University in 1977. He received theRabindra Puraskar in 1980.
In 1944, he married a fellow student,Leela Mukherjee.[5][6] In 1949, they had their only child, the artistMrinalini Mukherjee.[7]
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