(1956-2023)
Manoj Dutta was born in Kolkata, 1956 and he was an Indian self-taught artist. He explored Indian folk and traditional art in his paintings. He admired popular artists for their spontaneous style, which influenced his direct and immediate approach. Dutta used carefully chosen colors to created depth and texture. His paintings beautifully express different moods and emotions through vivid colors and fluid lines.
Dutta's art revives and enriches the traditional two-dimensional style found in Indian folk art. His paintings and pastels burst with bright colours, layered in subtle textures and shades, enhancing his stylized and seemingly simple images. He uses a dominant colour like blue, red, or violet to create a theme, forming a harmonious interplay of depth and shadow. His meticulously designed artworks integrate intricate details, framing his images with conceptual finesse. His drawings and paintings, whether made with pencil or brush, are simple, fluid, and deeply expressive. His images can vividly contrast with plain or subtly muted backgrounds, blend skillfully into bold shading, or pause mid-action in a stylized manner. Each artwork captures a unique mood—whimsical, humorous, introspective, or poignant—evoking nostalgia, memories, or serene beauty. Also, he drew inspiration from Kalighat painting’s style and depicted the day-today life and culture of Kolkata. Dolls, puppets, toys, birds, cats, flora and fauna frequently appear in his artworks. His loves in nature and reality permeated his canvas. He experimented with various mediums such as pastels dry and oils both, oils, acrylics, pens & inks, mix media, Aquatint prints. Serigraph prints, tempera, gouache and watercolours.
According to Dutta, “while his paintings prominently featured elements of folk art, they were primarily shaped by his encounters with contemporary reality. The essence of folk form and emotion flowed into his artworks as organically as the soulful melodies that resonated from deep within a folk singer's heart. In his pursuit, Dutta endeavored to capture the same simplicity and immediacy in his artistic creations. And His artwork is deeply rooted in contemporary reality, portraying a rich tapestry of our hopes, aspirations, societal dynamics, political and religious themes, and the myriad events that shape our surroundings.”
Dutta participated in numerous national and international exhibitions in Kolkata, Mumbai, Japan, and South Korea. His work became part of the permanent collections at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata.
Manoj Dutta passed away in Kolkata, 2023.
