(7 May, 1861- 7 August, 1941)
Rabindranath Tagore was born in Jorasanko, Kolkata, 1861. He was a renowned Indian poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter of the Bengal Renaissance, declared and honoured with the title of 'National Art Treasure' by the Government of India. He was the founder of the experimental school in rural at Shantiniketan, West Bengal in 1901, aiming to combine the best of Indian and Western traditions. He shifted there permanently, and the school became Visva-Bharati University in 1921. Tagore played a significant role in introducing Indian culture to the West and Western culture to India, and he is widely seen as the leading creative artist of early 20th-century India. In 1913, he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Also, he wrote the “National Anthem of India (Jan- Gan-Man…)”. Eminent artists Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore are the nephews of Rabindranath Tagore.
Tagore started creating art later in life, at the age of 63. Despite this, he painted nearly 2,500 artworks in the few years he was an artist and he did not have formal training in art. In most of his paintings, he used dark colours and bright highlights. For him, painting felt like a burst of newfound freedom, so he used various materials. He preferred using ink, watercolour, crayon, pen, and even his fingertips. Form, composition, rhythm, and vibrant energy were key elements of his artistic style. His paintings feature intense, semi-expressionist faces of men and women living in a twilight world and a dreamy landscape. These paintings express hidden emotions and a deep, thoughtful inner world. They don't connect to any specific national style but belong to a modern, international approach to painting. His artworks continued the style he developed with his Santiniketan landscapes in the 1930s but also marked a new direction. They are often expansive, and usually in ink on paper, offering a different sense of space compared to his earlier landscapes. His final series of drawings, made in the early 1960s, showed a shift toward abstraction and a very simple style. His paintings and drawings reflected the influence of artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marx, Georg Muche, Nicholas Roerich.
Tagore’s paintings represented a break with himself as a poet and philosopher. While he believed in harmony, goodness, and beauty in the world, his paintings often contrast with these beliefs, presenting a different, more complex view. The deeply troubled, distorted faces appeared to be looking into their own inner selves, with images coming from the depths of their subconscious.
Rabindranath Tagore passed away in Jorasanko, Kolkata on 7 August, 1941.
