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| Kokka
and the Early Neo-Bengal School Masters
This web page presents four rare images of early neo-Bengal School paintings by Abanindranath Tagore, Surendranath Ganguly and Nandalal Bose. These images have been scanned directly from original Kokka woodblock prints from Japan; which were issued by the Indian Society of Oriental Art (estd.1907), Calcutta. The prints are about one hundred years old. Kokka or the “National Essence” is an influential monthly magazine specializing in East Asian, particularly Japanese art. It was jointly founded by the art patron Kuki Ryuichi, art critic Tenshin Okakura (Kakuzo Okakura) and Asahi Shimbun editorial writer Takahashi Kenzo. As early as 1905, the Kokka was published by The Kokka Publishing Company, 10 Yazaemon-cho, Kyobashi-ku, Tokyo. On the first page of its first issue one finds the famous "Kokka Declaration" wherein the cultural atmosphere of the Meiji Japan was precisely described. The Declaration begins with "Art is the Quintessence of the nation" thus laying the basis for the foundation of the publication and its editorial policy. Incidentally, the Kokka had simultaneously patronized and promoted the artists of Nihon Bijutsuin of Meiji Japan and the neo-Bengal School of India. So to say, the mighty artists Shimomura Kanzan, Yokoyama Taikan and Shunso Hishida in Japan, and Abanindranath Tagore and his illustrious batch of neo-Bengal School artists in India…all had been benefited out of their interaction and art promotion by the craftsmen of Kokka. True, in India we had our Ramananda Chattopadhyay and his printer Upendrakishore Ray Chaudhury (grandfather of Satyajit Ray) at their 100, Gurpar Road half-tone block printing press, publishing Prabasi and Modern Review and Chatterjee’s Album with their sort of acceptable range of fine art reproduction, but that fine spark of an unmistakable Japanese printmaking was totally absent on the reproductions by the press of U. Ray & Sons at 100 Gurpar Road, Calcutta and these are no match to prints either by Kokka or Emery Walker, or Carl Hentschel or William Griggs! Today, about a century later, Kokka woodblock
prints of neo-Bengal School still bear testimony to the fact that what
an unsurpassed quality was achieved by the Japanese craftsmen in the
realm of art reproduction!
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