FATHER OF FOLK RENAISSANCE : JAMINI ROY

About Jamini Roy:

Born in West Bengal in 1887, Jamini Roy is a significant modernist of the twentieth century . As a young child, Roy was fascinated with patuas (they are traditional painters of Bengal who painted scrolls on cloth) and their craft with whom he spent most of his? days and watched them work. With his interest and inclination towards arts and crafts from his hometown, his father eventually sent him to an arts college. He graduated from the Government School of Art, Kolkata in 1914. Three years at art school and soon thereafter were years of great financial hardship for Jamini Roy. He did many odd jobs like painting theater scenes, backdrops and the like for professional theater companies that flourished in north Kolkata. While he was still at the school he married Amiyasundari Devi with whom he had five sons and a daughter.

Artistic Evolution and subject:

Jamini’s art journey began with impressionist paintings from which he then moved towards capturing the simplicity and traditional folk life of people. The artist shifted away from Western training and created a new style of his own based on Bengali folk traditions. He discarded the conventional trend of painting on canvas and began painting on cloth, mats and wood coated with lime. He even preferred natural pigments made out of chalk powder, flowers, lamp black, mercury powder, rock dust and tamarind seeds over European paints.

The artist captured a plethora of themes like episodes from Indian mythology, sensuous Santhal women, landscapes from countryside, cats and Jesus in his distinctive pure universal forms, among several others. The use of bright colors, bold lines and stylized faces are evocative, giving it all essentially a modernist outlook. He seemed to be fascinated by women and their graceful postures, men and women working but was mostly attracted by the mother and child theme. He attempted subjects like pottery, trees? and other objects to give a rural touch to the artwork and also decorate it with motifs. He transformed his ideas into a homely sphere depicting an indigenous style creating a series of urban and rural linkages. Roy also catered to the popular stereotypes where he portrayed the insecurities and tormentations of women and their dependency on males in a male dominated society.

Jamini Roy, also called the Father of Folk Renaissance is regarded for his artistic vision which is deeply immersed in a complacent existence. His artworks are full of diversified richness and his skilled pictorial idioms oscillate between appreciation and disregard. He was a revolutionary artist whose art skills contributed greatly to shape the trajectory of Modern Indian Art.?

Market Performance of Jamini Roy:

The first work from Roy’s artworks appeared at auction back in July 1992. Since then, in the span of 30 financial years, with the sale of 1,195 works at auction, Jamini Roy’s cumulative turnover stands at ?114 crores (US$19.4 M). According to the Indian Art Investor’s Top 50 Artists list, Roy stands at rank 16. He continues to be a top performing Pre-Modernist at auction with 312 of his artworks being sold for a total turnover of ?41.1 crores (US$6.3 M) over just the past 5 years. ?The artist has recorded a good sell-through rate of 86.1%.?

According to Indian Art Investor’s proprietary Repeat Sales Index, Jamini Roy’s artworks have proven to be a good investment. The demand and popularity of the artist’s works is evident with how many of his works come up for resale at auction and earn their investors steady returns.? For example, The 1940 Untitled tempera on card appeared in the auction in July 2021, where it was sold for ?11.2 lakhs (US$15 K). After a gap of 1 year and 4 months, the artwork was auctioned again in November 2021 and was sold for ?18.1 lakhs (US$24.4 K) fetching its investors an impressive CAGR of 43.1%.? Auction houses, in India and abroad, continue to put up Jamini Roy’s paintings for sale because of how much they are appreciated by art collectors across the world. Indian Art Investor advises potential investors to grab the next possible opportunity to acquire a work by the pre-modernist as it is bound to appreciate with time.??