Jamini Roy

Jamini Roy exhibition catalogue, Calcutta 1929
Photo: Mukul Dey ArchivesThis article is reprinted from ‘Art & Deal’, May-June, 2000.

It is proposed to record here, approximately seventy-one years after the event, the details of a one-man show where Jamini Roy presented for the first time his style of painting with folk idioms.

Except in the writings of Jogesh Chandra Bagal (Centenary Volume, p. 48) this particular exhibition of Roy fails to secure even a passing mention in the apparently erudite and informative writing of Shahid Suhrawardy, and Bishnu Dey and John Irwin (Jamini Roy) respectively. Surprisingly, in none of the subsequent literature on Roy do we find any mention of this particular exhibition. Why?