Sunayani Devi

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Sunayani Devi, before 1924

Sunayani Devi ( Bengali সুনয়নী দেবী , actually Sunayani Chattopadhyay ; born June 18, 1875 in Calcutta ; † February 23, 1962 ) was an Indian modern painter . Some critics called her work the "epitome of Indian primitivism ".

Life

Sunayani Devi in 1875 as the daughter of Gunendranath Tagore in the important Bengali family Tagore born. Her older brothers Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore were well-known representatives of the Bengali school and Cubism . Her uncle was Rabindranath Tagore , who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature . She grew up in Jorasanko, a district of Calcutta and the center of the Bengali Renaissance , and was married to Rajanimohan Chattopadhyaya, a grandson of the Bengali reformer Ram Mohan Roy , at the age of eleven .

Despite her origins from a privileged and artistically influential family, Devi received no formal art training apart from the usual art and music lessons, but is considered an autodidact who “copied” techniques from her brothers. This included the Japanese sumi-e technique. Although she was encouraged and encouraged to paint by her husband, she was primarily a housewife and mother, which on the one hand influenced her choice of subjects, but was not necessarily conducive to her artistic career or her self-confidence. Her actual artistic activity began quite late after she was thirty and extended over a period of fifteen years. It is believed that it was also inspired by the resurgent Swadeshi movement for the liberation of India.

From 1915 she regularly took part in exhibitions of the Indian Society of Oriental Art , which took place in Calcutta, Allahabad , London and the USA , among others . In 1927 her work was shown in an exhibition of the Women's International Art Club . After the death of her husband in 1934, she ended her artistic activity. A critic had already noted a decline in “enthusiasm” from 1927, which was also attributed to their double burden. Her last public appearance in the world of art was an exhibition in her home organized by admirers of her work in 1935. In the 1940s she withdrew completely from the art world.

reception

The publications of the Austrian art historian Stella Kramrisch (1896–1993), who taught for many years as a professor of Indian art at the University of Calcutta , contributed significantly to Devi's fame . In 1925 she emphasized the “purity” and the “rebirth of a purely Indian tradition”, with which an “almost broken artistic tradition” is reflected in Devis' work in its own form - precisely because of the lack of artistic models and a formal one Training had been made possible.

Other contemporary critics also emphasized the independence and individual style, which was also not - which would have been obvious - influenced by their brothers.

The General Lexicon of Visual Artists of the XX. Century describes her as the first artist who "recognized the spiritual values ​​of the 'Pats' [= Pattachitra, traditional picture scrolls]" and referred back to the "monochrome, two-dimensional, essentially linear style". She creates her compositions directly from her inner imagination without making preliminary sketches. Their motifs are mythological scenes from the Mahabharata , Ramayana and Puranas .

Well-known artists such as Jamini Roy were later influenced by Devis' work.

Exhibitions

Works by Sunayani Devi have been shown in the following exhibitions:

  • 1922: Bauhaus in Calcutta, at the same time the 14th annual exhibition of the Indian Society of Oriental Art
  • 1926: Women's Club Society, London
  • 1927: Womens International Art Club, London
  • 2011: Rabindranath Tagore's Influence on Modern Indian Art. London, Nehru Center
  • 2013: The Bauhaus in Calcutta. Dessau , Bauhaus Museum

Works in museums

Work by Sunayani Devi has been included in the collections of the following major Indian museums:

literature

  • Devi, Sunayani . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 556 .
  • Stella Kramrisch: Sunayani Devi . In: The Cicerone. Half-monthly publication for the interests of the art researcher & collector . tape 17 . Klinkhardt & Biermann Verlag, Leipzig 1925, p. 84–93 , urn : nbn: de: bsz: 16-diglit-420402 .
  • Partha Mitter: The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47 . Reaction Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-86189-318-5 , pp. 36-45 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f SUNAYANI DEVI (1875–1962) Untitled (Lady with Parrot). In: Christie's auction house. 2017, accessed on March 8, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Devi, Sunayani . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 556 .
  3. ↑ Partha Mitter: Sunayani Devi. In: Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Partha Mitter: The Triumph of Modernism: India's Artists and the Avant-garde, 1922-47 . Reaction Books, 2007, ISBN 978-1-86189-318-5 , pp. 36-45 .
  5. ↑ Soma Basu: Chapter IV. - Women artists in the Indian Society of Oriental Art 1907-1947 . In: University of Calcutta (Ed.): In search of an identity artists in the Indian society of oriental art 1907 to 1947 . Calcutta 2011, p. 156 ( digitized from shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in ).
  6. ↑ Chitra Deb: Women of The Tagore Household . Penguin UK, 2010, ISBN 978-0-14-306605-7 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - (no page numbers)).
  7. ↑ Gayatri Sinha: Women artists in India: practice and patronage . In: Janice Helland (Ed.): Local / Global: Women Artists in the Nineteenth Century . (no page numbers available). Routledge, 2017, ISBN 978-1-351-55983-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  8. ↑ a b c Shilpi Das: Remembering Sunayani Devi: A forgotten artist from history. In: The Heritage Lab. March 7, 2019, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  9. ↑ G Venkatachalam: Sunayani Devi. In: criticalcollective.in. Retrieved March 7, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Stella Kramrisch: Sunayani Devi . In: The Cicerone. Half-monthly publication for the interests of the art researcher & collector . tape 17 . Klinkhardt & Biermann Verlag, Leipzig 1925, p. 87–88 , urn : nbn: de: bsz: 16-diglit-420402 .
  11. ↑ a b Soma Basu: Chapter IV. - Women artists in the Indian Society of Oriental Art 1907-1947 . In: University of Calcutta (Ed.): In search of an identity artists in the Indian society of oriental art 1907 to 1947 . Calcutta 2011, p. 158–161 ( digitized from shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in ).
  12. ↑ Julia Madeleine Trouilloud: The reception of Modern European Art in Calcutta: A Complex Negotiation (1910s-1940s) . In: Atl @ s Bulletin . tape 6 , no. 2 , 2017 ( OpenAccess digitized at docs.lib.purdue.edu ).
  13. ↑ Arno Widmann: There was not only a modern age. In: Frankfurter Rundschau. April 2, 2013, accessed March 7, 2019 .
  14. ^ Martin Beattie: Problems of Translation . In: Martha Langford (Ed.): Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World (=  McGill-Queen's / Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation Studies in Art History ). McGill-Queen's Press, 2017, ISBN 978-0-7735-5081-0 , pp. 85 .
  15. ↑ SUNAYANI DEVI (1875-1962) Untitled (Krishna). In: Christie's auction house. 2018, accessed on March 8, 2019 .
  16. ↑ Overview of works Sunayani Devi in Indian museums (search). In: The National Portal and Digital Repository for Indian Museums. Ministry of Culture, accessed March 7, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Devi, Sunayani
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sunayani Chattopadhyay
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian modern painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Calcutta
DATE OF DEATH February 23, 1962