NGMA organises virtual tour on Ramkinkar Baij's 115th birth anniversary

To mark the 115th birth anniversary of sculptor-painter Ramkinkar Baij, the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on Tuesday organised a virtual tour of an exhibition on the life and works of the artist, continuing its efforts to make art accessible online amidst a nationwide lockdown. The show, ”Ramkinkar Baij: Journey through silent transformation and expression” that can be accessed on the gallery’s website, offers a window to the artist's most famous works as well as three of his sketchbooks containing 182 works of art.

The virtual tour presents a total of 520 art works from the reserve collection of NGMA, grouped in a series of five different themes of 'Portrait', 'Life Study', 'Abstract & Structural Composition', 'Nature Study & Landscape' and 'Sculptures'.  Remembering the iconic sculptor, NGMA Director General Adwaita Gadanayak said that Baij "pushed the limits of experimentation and ventured into the use of new materials”. "One of the earliest modernists in Indian art, he assimilated the idioms of the European modern visual language and yet was rooted in his own Indian ethos.  "He experimented restlessly with forms, moving freely from figurative to abstract and back to figurative, his themes were steeped in a deep sense of humanism and an instinctive understanding of the symbiotic relationship between man and nature," Gadanayak said in a statement.

Best known for his "unconventional" use of cement concrete for public sculptures, the artist from Bankura in West Bengal has several accolades to his credit, including the Padma Bhushan, which was awarded to him in 1970. "The use of cement, laterite and mortar to model the figures, and the use of a personal style in which modern western and Indian pre-classical sculptural values were brought together was equally radical," Gadanayak added.

Among his most popular installations is "The Santhal Family” sculpture in Santiniketan, created in 1938.   Baij was invited to participate in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1950 and in the Salon de Mai in 1951, both associations of artists formed in France. He became a fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1976.  The artist passed away in Kolkata on August 2, 1980..