Paintings of GAGANENDRANATH TAGORE (হার্ডকভার)

Though art historian and scholar R. Siva Kumar describes the Paintings of Gaganendranath Tagore as ‘primarily a book of images’ with its large body of the Master’s works reproduced in a large format, in fact the largest collection so far, it unravels a sparsely documented narrative that pieces together a series of personal losses and the corresponding creative responses as they add up to a rich prospect covering richly nuanced landscapes, encounters with and re-creations of memory, legendary narratives, caricatures, Cubist vision, and visionary dreamscapes. An intensely private, self trained practitioner of the arts, Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938) had almost nothing to say about his painting, leaving the critic to speculate in a critical void. In his speculations, the author opens up a whole new space for re-viewing and re-reading Gaganendranath.