Artist View

DIED
July 2, 2019 Bidhannagar

EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS
1959 Completed his art appreciation course at Ashutosh Museum, Kolkata University, Kolkata
1956-58 She attended evening classes at the Indian College of Art and Drawmanship, Kolkata
1952 Bachelor of Commerce, Vidyasagar College, University of Kolkata, Kolkata

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2016 Kingdom of Exile A Retrospective, DAG Modern, New York
2014-15 Kingdom of Exile: A Retrospective, Delhi Art Gallery, Mumbai
1999 Alternative Art Gallery, Kolkata
1993 Small art gallery, Calcutta
1993 Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
1991 LTG Art Gallery, New Delhi
1990 Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai
1989 Taj Art Gallery, Bombay
1987 Artistic Heritage, New Delhi
1987 Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Kolkata
1984 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1983 Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi
1982 Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi
1980 Max Mueller Bhavan, Bombay
1980 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1979 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1978 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1977 Triveni Gallery, New Delhi
1976 French Cultural Centre, Calcutta
1974 Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi
1973 Chemould Gallery, Calcutta
1971 Chemould Gallery, Calcutta
1966 Priyadarshini Gallery, Calcutta
1965 House of Art, Calcutta
1963 Gallery of Arts and Prints, Calcutta
1961 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 The Living Insignia, Ensign Gallery, New Delhi
2010 Pretty Ugly, Bose Pacia, Calcutta
2009 The Root of Everything, Mementos Gallery, Bangalore
2008 Frame Figure Field 20th Century Modern and Contemporary Indian Art, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2007 Adaptation of still life to 20th-century Indian art, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2006 Nude line drawings by 12 artists, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2002 The Chemould Gallery, Calcutta
2002 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta
2002 Ossians Exhibition and Auction, Mumbai
2001 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata
2001 Exhibition and auction at Art for Hearts Sake, Mumbai
2000 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata
1999 The Alternative Art Gallery, Calcutta
1998 10th Anniversary Exhibition of Contemporary Painters, organized by Center Art Gallery, Kolkata
1998 Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai
1996 LTG Art Gallery, New Delhi
1996 Watercolors of West Bengal, organized by Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Mumbai
1995 La Mere Gallery, Calcutta
1994 LTG Art Gallery, New Delhi
1993 Small art gallery, New Delhi
1992 Contemporary Indian art, Dhaka, Bangladesh
1989 Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust Exhibition, New Delhi
1989 Taj Art Gallery, Bombay
1988 Art for Cry, Mumbai, New Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore
1988 Gallery 88, Calcutta
1985 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1985 Calcutta Information Center and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1983 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1983 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1982 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1981 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1980 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1980 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1980 Exhibition in miniature format, organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1979 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1979 Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi
1978 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1978 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1976 Max Mueller Bhavan, Calcutta
1976 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1975 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1975 Shridaharani Gallery, New Delhi
1975 Alliance Francaise, Calcutta
1974 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1973 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1972 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1972 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay
1972 Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan
1971 Calcutta Information Centre, Calcutta
1971 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1970 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta
1969 Calcutta Information Centre, Calcutta
1969 Indian Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS), New Delhi
1968 Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan
1965 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1964 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1964 Gallery of the All India Society of Fine Arts and Crafts, New Delhi
1963 Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1955 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta

PARTICIPATIONS
2013 The Nude and the Nude The Body in Modern Indian Art, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2011 Manifestations VI, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2011 Manifestations V, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2010 Manifestations IV, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
Annual Exhibition 2009, La-Mere, Sri Aurobindo Institute of Culture, Kolkata
2005 Manifestations III, organized by Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi at Nehru Centre, Mumbai, and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
2004 Manifestations II, organized by Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai and Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
2003 Demonstrations I, organized by Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi at the World Trade Centre, Mumbai, and Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi
1998 10th Anniversary of Calcutta Painters, Calcutta
1996 Fifth All India Veteran Artists Exhibition, New Delhi
1984 Tokyo Biennale, Japan
1975 Third Triennial, New Delhi
1963, 64, 65 National Exhibition, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi and Calcutta

HONORS AND AWARD
2001 Abanindranath Puraskar, awarded by the Department of Information and Culture, Government of West Bengal, Kolkata
1996 Eminent Painter, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS), New Delhi

ABOUT THE ARTIST

For me, art is an expression of my most intimate being. This is the only means I know. With my brush, oil paints, pencil, and charcoal, I portray emotions. And before I know it, I am transported to another world. Little by little I find my canvas coming to life.

Rabin Mondal was born in 1932, in Calcutta, into a poor family of government officials. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Vidyasagar School of Art. His works exploit the grotesque to express inner turmoil and human struggles. His feelings towards his surroundings have been quite strange. Perhaps the environment in which he spent his formative years has something to do with it. Mondal grew up in the populous industrial city of Howrah, near Calcutta. I know the great city on the other side of the Ganges intimately, he says. In the dark alleys of the city, nightmarish poverty stared us in the face. I saw the poorest of the poor and the rich living within a stone's throw of each other. It was tragic to see how some lay untreated, while those who could afford it continued to spend money even on a dead man.

The industrial belt of Howrah, with its inherent tendency towards violence, anguish, and suffering, influenced him deeply and found its way into his works. So did the ugly street battles waged by political parties. Mondal found that his artistic temperament did not align with the hostile environment and situation.

Additionally, a debilitating knee injury in his childhood created a sense of isolation for the artist, which also finds expression in his canvas. He says that what saved him from madness was his talent in art. In 1949, he joined the Vidyasagar College of Art, Calcutta. At that time a festival of French artists was being held in the city. He exposed him to the works of French modernist artists. Before this, he had no exposure to the international art world. He was only familiar with different schools of Indian art, particularly the Bengal school.

As a young painter, Mondal was drawn to the folk style of Jamini Roy and the haunting paintings and drawings of Rabindranath Tagore. However, the exhibition of French artists was practically a turning point in his artistic career. This was like opening a window to an amazing, amazing, and unsuspected world, he says. This encounter with avant-garde Western art helped him later incorporate elements of it into his work.

His works were first exhibited in 1955, as part of a group exhibition together with other prominent artists of the Bengali school. He held his first solo exhibition in 1961 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta. Mondal's works are mainly figurative. He paints with bold strokes and creates paintings, whose themes are universal. The faces of his figures stare at you from the canvas, strange and thoughtful, but also strong and defiant. Not yet defeated, surviving by sheer force of spirit. He mainly uses dense pigments in blacks and reds, and only occasionally moss green, and turquoise colors seep through.

For someone who hates all forms of pretension, he has made a series of paintings about queens and empresses. Although they belong to the past, the queens live practically isolated and I feel sorry for them, he says. It is this isolation that makes the queen, for me, a fascinating subject. One of the criticisms made of him is that his works are not pleasing to the eye. To which he responds Painting is to communicate and not to decorate.

Samir Dutta, art critic for the Calcutta-based Statesman newspaper, who also made a television documentary about him, says: Mondal has developed a signature of his own. His style through decades of challenging and daring experiments adopts images of primitive humans prevailing against great obstacles in a dense palette of both pure and mixed colors. Here we have a formidable drama, a pulsating theater of the primitive that has its basis in the merciless jungle of today's urban existence.

Mondal has also been quite active with the city's avant-garde artist organizations. He was a member of Lalit Kala Akademi from 1979 to 1982 and also published a book with his drawings. It took decades for Rabin Mondal to emerge as one of India's leading modern painters.

The artist passed away on July 2, 2019.