29 Facts About Nirode Mazumdar

Nirode Mazumdar was an Indian painter from the first generation of modernists, and a key member of the Calcutta Group.

Nirode Mazumdar's paintings are based on what he called 'constructive symbolism'.

Nirode Mazumdar was born to Prafulla Chandra Mazumdar and Renukamoyee Mazumdar on 11 May 1916 at Calcutta.

Renukamoyee had a keen literary interest and thus Nirode Mazumdar was exposed to literary activities and trends from his childhood.

Nirode Mazumdar was born into one of Calcutta's most prominent artistic and culturally elevated families-the Mazumdar family of seven siblings.

Nirode Mazumdar grew up in an atmosphere of intense creativity.

Nirode Mazumdar's parents were originally from Taki, a town in the 24 Parganas district, but the family shifted to Calcutta.

Nirode Mazumdar was admitted into the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta in 1929 while he was only a mere boy of 13 and had his first education under Kshitindranath Majumdar, a student of Abanindranath Tagore.

However, while studying under Abanindranath, Nirode Mazumdar was showing signs of disapproval and rebellion with how outdated the Bengal School was in keeping up with the socio-political climate at that time.

Nirode Mazumdar felt the school was a gymnasium that taught students the futile methods of rendering the classics in paraphrase.

Nirode Mazumdar entered Paris during its golden period, Artists like Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse and Constantin Brancusi were at the helm of their careers, students from across the world were flocking to Paris as it was the Mecca for the art world, studying at the various academies and studios, engaging in the cafe culture where long discussions on art with fellow students and friends took place.

Nirode Mazumdar studied and worked in the studio of French artist Andre Lhote, in Paris.

Between 1946 and 1951, Nirode Mazumdar stayed is in Paris, and worked in different Parisian studios and participated in various exhibitions of foreign painters mainly at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

Nirode Mazumdar liked Paris so much that even when his term at the Louvre was over, he decided to stay on in Paris.

The scholarship having ended, Nirode Mazumdar was forced to take on a school teacher's job.

In 1946 Nirode Mazumdar had his first one-man show in Calcutta.

Nirode Mazumdar left France for England in 1951 and there, he took part in exhibitions organized by the Indian High Commission in London, group shows, held at the India House and worked for some time as a curator of the art gallery there.

Back in Paris, Nirode Mazumdar continued his pictorial research, at the same time, plunging into the oriental philosophies, mythologies, his cultural heritage, and, in 1957, exhibits a series of oil paintings "Images Ecloses" in his Paris studio, the fruit of his research and study.

Nirode Mazumdar bade a total goodbye to the past by tearing up all his old paintings, many of which had been highly praised both in Paris and in London.

From this time onwards and on his return to Calcutta, Nirode Mazumdar kept on working, searching, researching in pictorial, aesthetic, as well as philosophical domains.

Nirode Mazumdar's work remained rooted in the pictorial tradition of Bengal, which he harmonized with European modernism.

Nirode Mazumdar was a frequent visitor at the Jorasanko Thakurbari.

Nirode Mazumdar chose the bird as his subject in 1961 for his second series 'The Wing of No End'-which was chosen to stress the notion of time and eternity, delineating the sensible and intelligible in art form and analysing how, in the art of space the measured, the non-measured and the non-measurable can be distinguished.

Nirode Mazumdar participates in the show "Francophile Painters" organized by Alliance Francaise Kolkata.

Nirode Mazumdar returned to France in 1978 and had an exhibition at Lyon.

Nirode Mazumdar passed away in September 1982 at the age of 66.

For Nirode Mazumdar, drawing formed the intellectual side of art.

For Nirode Mazumdar, any painting needed to be geometrically visualised and the visual idea could not be translated into concrete terms except through geometry.

Nirode Mazumdar is one of the most devalued painters of modern India.