50 Great Indian Cartoonists | Dr.
Mrinal Chatterjee
Chittaprosad Bhattacharya
Chittaprosad Bhattacharya is
India’s most recognized political artist of the mid-20th century. He preferred
watercolor and printmaking, avoiding oil on canvas. Chittaprosad used prints to
disseminate leftist ideas and propaganda. He also drew scathing cartoons depicting the
condition of the downtrodden.
Chittaprosad's Bhattacharya's
works reflect his reformist concerns. They are a depiction of the images that
were his preoccupation --- poor peasants and laborers. His hard-hitting
caricatures and sketches of the poor dying in the Bengal famine (1943) worked
like modern day reportage, and shook the middle class and the British officials
out of their apathy.
He was born in Naihati, North 24
Parganas District, West Bengal on June 15, 1915. His father, a government officer, was an amateur
pianist, and his mother a poet.
He studied in Chittagong Govt.
College, Bangladesh from 1932 to 1936. While he was a student he was initiated into
left wing political philosophy. He joined the grassroots movement to resist
both colonial oppression by the British, and also the feudal oppression of the
landed Indian gentry. Chittaprosad rejected the classicism of the Bengal School
and its spiritual preoccupations. Due to
his refusal to accept the discriminations of the caste system, Chittaprosad
never used his Brahminical surname during his life. He wrote articles and
produced incisive cartoons and illustrations that displayed a natural talent
for draughtsmanship. He was not trained in arts in any institutional set up. He
was a self-taught artist. It was the village sculptors and the puppet-players
who inspired him. It is interesting to know that he was once refused admission
in the Government School of Art, Kolkata and the Kala Bhawan, Santiniketan.
Career
Chittaprosad’s most creative
years began in the 1930s. He satirized and sharply criticized the feudal and
colonial systems in quickly drawn but masterful pen and ink sketches. The
artist/reformer was also proficient at creating linocuts and woodcuts with
obvious propagandistic intent. Since these cheaply made prints were created for
the masses rather than the art gallery, they were seldom signed or numbered.
With time they took on value as art, and today are prized by collectors.
In 1943 Chittaprosad covered the
Bengal Famine for various communist publications. This resulted in his first
publication, Hungry Bengal. It was a
sharply provocative attack on the political and social powers of the time, and
the authorities suppressed it nearly immediately, impounding and destroying
large numbers. He drew first attention,
by his powerful, sensitive, black and white drawings of Bengal famine, he
reported the horror he witnessed. His drawings were published in the then
Communist Party journals like Peoples War and Janayudha. His reports were also
published in English as a pamphlet titled Hungry Bengal, by the Peoples
Publishing House, Bombay.
Style
Chittaprosad was the leader of a
distinct trend in the National Art Movement of India. He was an artist of the
people- the great multitude of India; poverty ridden, exploited, and the
victims of every possible circumstance, but of unbounded vitality, keepers of
its unique cultural heritage with a legacy of hundreds of years of stoic
survival against all odds. His works varied from time to time, responding to
the subjects he was dealing with. The main theme of his works revolved around
the society he was living in, in fact he picturised the darker side of life,
which seemed to be very expressionistic. His style is not blindly realistic; it
has a folk feeling, as well as a complete affinity with the forms integral to
the people. A self-taught artist, he experimented constantly with the art of
picture making. A master of many forms, he quickly adapted to the need of the
times and switched to simpler lines and fewer exaggerations of forms.
Later Years
He moved to Bombay to work for
the Left Press. He did many works depicting the Telangana Peasents armed
struggle against the Nizams tyrannical regime in Hyderabad. Chittaprosad
settled more permanently in Bombay from 1946 onward. The transformations that
the Communist Party took between 1948 and 1949 caused the artist to
disassociate himself, though he continued to pursue political themes in his art
to the end of his life. In the late 1940s, Chittaprosad dissociated himself
from the Party but his political commentary continued through his linocuts and
cartoons, Uncle Sam and corrupt politicians and businessmen being his
predictable targets.
In the 1950s, he moved to Bombay
and did innumerable illustrations for children’s books and also the poster of
Bimal Roy’s Do Bigha Zamin.
In the 1960s he learnt the
techinques of Czech puppetry from Mr. Frantisek Salaba, a Czech amateur
puppeteer who lived in Bombay. He rejuvenated the traditional puppet theatre by
founding his own Khela Ghar, where he introduced modern themes in traditional
art forms.
In the years before his death,
the artist devoted more and more time to the world peace movement, and various
efforts to help impoverished children.
He never went abroad, never married. Living
in a one-room apartment called Ruby Terrace in Andheri, Mumbai, Bhattacharya’s
house had books, a dog and a cat. Dressed in a vest and lungi, he would recite
the poems of Stéphane Mallarme, Friedrich Hölderlin and Rainer Maria Rilke (in
at least two photographs, he is seen in a torn vest). He cooked his own food;
the stove and dinner plates were stacked under the bed, next to his paintings.
Bhattacharya
passed away in Kolkata in 1978. He died of chronic
bronchitis at age 63.
He is represented in the National Museum, Prague, The National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, Osians Art Archive, Mumbai, and the Jane and Kito de Boer Collection, Dubai. His works have been exhibited in several counties of the world including Czechoslovakia (Prague, where his first major exhibition was held), Denmark, Holland, Germany, Copenhagen and USA.
**
16.9.2014
mrinalchatterjeeiimc@gmail.com
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