Painted Folk Art Birds

Abani Sen—the forgotten Maestro

We live and serve the slice of time we are placed in. The life of artist Abani Sen unfolded in an agitated, catastrophic and clouded period of India’s history. The times posed many challenges for Indians of all hues and calling. The most important was to unite India as a nation of people to fight the demeaning imperialist yoke of British Empire.
The year 1905 in India’s history is important. It was the year of first partition of Bengal. It also effectively implemented in Bengal the policy of divide and rule by British Imperialists. But it also fired the Indian Nationalism against British rule. In this year of political turmoil was born Abani Sen—the artist whose sterling contribution to art of the period was substantial. Somehow he seemed to have been consigned an opaque, nearly forgotten existence in the annals of art of the period. While we know a lot about his famous contemporaries, the students of art and art history seem nearly ignorant of his contribution at least outside Bengal. Vijay Lakshmi Dogra the soft spoken suave Art Indus gallery owner in Delhi should be thanked for removing the dust of time on Abani Sen’s art by organising a large exhibition of his work and bringing out a professionally produced book Whispered Legacy edited by Ina Puri.
Reverting back to backdrop of times in which Abani Sen waged aesthetic battles through his creativity. We know that first five decades of twentieth century were full of upheavals and trauma for humankind. The first partition of Bengal galvanised Bengal and the rest of India in a nationalistic fervour and led to the birth of Swadeshi Movement. It was during this period that Indian National Congress emerged as a pan India entity to fight for freedom from the yoke of British Imperial bondage.
It is necessary to be familiar with other catastrophic happenings till about India’s independence from British yoke. The First World War and the 1920’s Great Depression caused havoc to people and especially to peasantry. For Bengal the misfortune was accentuated not only by the II World War but far greater was the misery to people because of the manmade or rather British Raj made Bengal Famine of 1943-1944. Around 4 million people died of starvation; the civilian and military sexual abuse of starving women and girls was the side show of this imposed inhumanity. (Refer Jane Austen and Black Hole of British History a book by Dr Gideon Polya)
How could the artists remain aloof from this chain of upheavals castrating the social psyche of an ancient proud people?
The early Bengal school and the later day Avante Guarde Bengal artists explored new vistas, styles and fresh expressions to translate the mayhem wrought on the innocent people of their land. The artists working during this epoch especially Nandlal Bose, Rabindranath Tagore, Hemen Majumdar, Ram Kinkar Baij, Pradosh Das Gupta, B.B. Mukherjee, Abani Sen, Nirod Majumdar, Gobardhan Ash, Chitto Prasad, Zainul Abedin, Somnath Hore and many more would provide a new freshness, national and social concern to the Bengal art. The last three artists would paint the Bengal famine with power and telling effect.

Abani Sen thus inherited the socio-politico-economic situation of his times to which he was a witness and a sufferer. His art from the beginning did not focus on depicting the dark happenings of the time. Abani chose instead to work through evocation and metaphor. He did not directly paint pain and suffering of the people as did Chitto Prasad, Zainul Abedin, Somnath Hore and others. He painted from his subconscious. As a child he had grown in the verdant nature-kissed land of Bengal. It was this he drew upon as a source for his art forever. He painted landscapes, animals birds and ordinary people in the street. He did not overtly record the happenings of the period. But in a subtle depiction of moods he conveyed sadness and melancholia that inhabited whole society. His agitated handling of pictorial space, use of black and grey, and whimsical line albeit suggestive of Chinese and Japanese style rendering conveyed a sombre mood.
His bulls, horses, elephants, birds and the lion family (1968) are rendered to bring out the character of the animals and their moods in nick of time. There is strong element of expressionism in many renderings of animals specially when he works in water colour.
Abani Sen’s art was influenced by a variety of movements and styles. You can find semblance of the BATHERS by Cezanne in his 1962 oil painting or the touching simplicity and directness of naïve and folk art in his ink drawing from 1962 of a woman holding chicken. Looking further on his oeuvre you come across his minimalist handling and control of line like a Zen maestro (page 48 watercolour in Whispered Legacy). He also uses geometric linear simplification of forms like in the cowherds of 1965 watercolour. Apart from KS Kulkarni one finds the resonance of this geometric divisionism of forms in the works of Prof. Niren Sen Gupta and the young artist Neeraj Goswami.
A theme that Abani Sen painted persistently and repeatedly is the mother and child. He focused on the gestural rendering of line to convey the soft mother child relation. Like always he excelled while working in water colours and ink. In most difficult of the times a mother is protective of her child and the Bengal Famine was a period when the motherhood and human values were tested to the core. Abani Sen’s mother child works from around this period are highly evocative of love, care and protective shield of a mother for her progeny.
 Abani Sen worked in variety of styles because as a guru he taught his students differing paths to creative expression. But if you look around you can find his best. His man with a rose and seated woman in a landscape (page 29) is a masterpiece of expression, modernity and exquisite emotions. His 1968 watercolour of lion family is a powerful work. One has to understand that all works from great artists are not masterpieces, whether you talk of Picasso or Hussain. It will require effort to cull out the best of Abani Sen and to focus on his creative journey that was not only modernist but visionary. There are traces of academism in quite a few of his works but they are not the foundation of his art.
For long (since 1948) he worked in Delhi where he had a long association with fellow artists and his students. On the opening of his retrospective exhibition by Art Indus at LKA recently I discovered many a senior artists who were associated with him as students or otherwise. The nostalgia flowed back about an artist who worked hard for his art and to create a new generation of artists in his studio.

I do not know whether all the works in the exhibition have been documented/exhibited earlier? The efforts of Ms. Ina Puri and  Ms.Vijay Lakshmi have created documentation which would help build authenticated pricing for his works in future. Few words on the book by Ina Puri. All paintings are without titles. In case there are no titles to the works, for easy reference they should have been numbered. Also for some works there is no detail i.e. year medium size (works on pages 11, 27, 34-35, 48, 66-67). There is a blunder in the 12-14 lines of third paragraph on page 17. Abani Sen was now much married and father of four children. As I understand that Abani Sen was married only once and never was much married like Picasso, Bertrand Russell or Salman Rushdie.

These glitches can be taken care of in the next print of the book. Though one can say some of the archival photographs of the time of Abani Sen are really precious. Also useful are the analysis and impressions about the impresario Abani Sen by Santo Dutta, Prof.Rajiv Lochan’s account saturated with childhood memories retailed from his father Ranvir Saksena—another illustrious student of the maestro, K.K. Nair’s comments on Abani’s art and his son Ranjan Sen’s empathic memories of his father. It is unfortunate that another bright and famous student Manjit Bawa (brought to Abani by his elder brother Manmohan Singh) lies seriously ailing. Well known artists Jagdish Dey, Umesh Verma, Ranjan Sen and many others found their artistic rudders in the studio of Abani Sen, Art historian Sovon Som’s writing on Abani Sen’s art is incisive.    I hope this exhibition and the book will awaken interest in the art of Abani Sen and allow art historians to take a fresh look at the oeuvre of this forgotten genious.

the Dining with Rosetta project

The Van Rensselear Children Portrait 1840 antique oil painting ! Folk art $24,900.00

Antique Pair of Iconic American Folk Art Carved Pine Wood Eagle Sculpture – RARE $20,000.00

Metal Art Sculpture Sculptor for Hire Travel Design fabricate install folk art ! $20,000.00

Mamie Falk Folk Art Oil Painting – Considered Minnesota’s “Grandma Moses” $19,750.00

Yuri Gorbachev ORIGINAL Landscape Oil painting Folk Art $17,500.00

Folk Art wood statue of Grover Cleveland 1894 $9,500.00

Antique Ship Captain Folk Art Carved Coconut Chalice $8,500.00

Original Oil On Canvas Painting by Minni Hines Bayou Scene Folk Art 24×48 $8,495.75

Chinese folk art sculpture carving stone inkstone for painting and handwriting $6,890.00

Chinese handcraft folk art stone sculpture carving inkstone inkslab fly dragon $6,329.00

Banjo Boy/ Pre-Civil War Folk Art on Linen $6,000.00

LARGE Antique Americana Folk Art Painting of Boy -Civil War Col. Orlando H Moore $5,999.99

Yuri Gorbachev Original Oil Painting Russian Art Folk $5,990.00

Chinese handcraft folk art sculpture carving inkstone inkslab—Avalokitesvara $5,590.00

AMERICAN FOLK ART PUPPET THEATRE QUEENS,NY $5,000.00

Clementine Hunter Signed Framed Folk Art Painting Cotton Pickin’ c1977 20×26.25 $5,000.00

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Bessie Harvey Folk Art Found Object Museum Piece!!! $5,000.00

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ANTIQUE 19th CENTURY AMERICAN FOLK ART FISH HOOK MASSIVE IRON TRADE SIGN $4,999.99

Signed OLD master GESSO FRAME OIL ON CANVAS PORTRAIT NELSON pipe Folk art $4,999.00

Clementine Hunter Folk Art Painting Signed “Picking Cotton” $4,850.00

Chinese folk art sculpture carving stone inkstone double dragon holding the sun $4,690.00

FOLK ART OIL PAINTING PORTRAIT CHILD ICONIC RED DRESS PRINCE CHARLES SPANIEL $4,500.00

Corbels Pair Wood Winged Griffins Victorian Old Paint Architectural Folk Art $4,500.00

FOLK ART PAINTING SULLIVAN COUNTY NEW YORK J R GEROW $4,500.00

Exceptional Folk Art Painting $4,500.00

Johnnie Swearingen! Great Folk Art!!! Peddling Melons $4,500.00

New England Folk Art Portrait on Canvas Ca.1830 $4,500.00

Clementine Hunter Signed Framed Folk Art Painting Wash Day c1977 19.25 x 23.25in $4,500.00

A Outstanding Early Trade Axe,Folk Art Hatchet, $4,500.00

Yuri Gorbachev Original Oil Painting Russian Art Folk $4,490.00

FANTASTIC FOLK ART CHEST $4,200.00

Clementine Hunter Signed Framed Folk Art Painting African Headdress c1977 25.5h $4,000.00

ANTIQUE MINIATURE PRIMITIVE FOLK ART WOOD RURAL SCENE FRAMED 12 1/4″ UNIQUE $3,885.00

*RARE TRAMP / FOLK ART Shoe Shine Box – Brass/Wood-Detailed-Ornate-Exquisite $3,800.00

Antique KNOTTY Tree Root Twig FOLK ART CHAIR Set GOODY KOONCH West Virginia $3,750.00

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Chinese handcraft folk art sculpture carving inkstone-an old man finshing alone $3,590.00

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Original Mexican Folk Art Icons Retablo:18-19th century $3,250.00

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Chinese handcraft folk art sculpture carving inkstone inkslab a man watch moon $2,999.00

fine Chinese handcraft folk art stone sculpture carving inkstone inkslab scenery $2,890.00

Temperance Movement Folk Art Painting Folk Art Temperance Painting $2,850.00

Anonymous Folk Art Carving Figure with Crown in Skirt with Snake $2,799.99

ANTIQUE OIL PAINTING FOLK ART NEW ENGLAND ‘HUGES’ 1892 $2,750.00

Chinese handcraft folk art stone sculpture carving inkstone inkslab with dragon $2,690.00

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HUGE 37″ Antique 19th American Folk Art Carved Gilt Wood Eagle Statue Americana $2,500.00

Antique Primitive Folk Art Hand Carved Wooden Dough Bowl $2,500.00

FOLK ART OIL PAINTING OF THE SS “OCEAN” STEAMSHIP $2,475.00

Ca. 1820 American Folk Art Painting Deformed Man $2,450.00

James Harold Jennings Amazing and Colorful Folk Art! $2,400.00

Doris Lee – Folk Art Painting – Signed and Titled – Original Condition $2,400.00

DC: Prison Folk Art Matchstick Ship, HUGE 5′ Length $2,379.00

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ANTIQUE Americana TRADE SIGN IMMIGRATION FOLK ART NYC ICE CREAM PUSH CART $2,200.00

Ohio Pioneer Abraham Betz 1818 HANDWRITTEN LESSON BOOK with FOLK ART $2,150.00

HAITIAN ART: Vibrant PAINTING, SIGNED by Renowned Folk Artist TOUSSAINT AUGUSTE $2,150.00

Philippines National Artist Abdul Imao Brass Sculpture w/ Base Mindanao Folk Art $2,100.00

Ellen Eilers Calico Country Folk Art Woodcut Ornamental Trees Rare Early Work $2,000.00

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Chinese handcraft folk art sculpture carving inkstone peasant work on his land $1,999.00

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Chinese folk art sculpture carving stone inkstone for painting and handwriting $1,890.00

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American Folk Art Painting of Little Girl Circa 1825 $1,800.00

Emma Schrock Folk Art 16″ by 12″ $1,795.00

c1920 Girl Knitting Folk Woman Antique Art Signed Oil Estate Painting $1,795.00

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Folk Art New England Oil on Canvas Painting/Circa 1860 $1,750.00