Benode Behari Mukherjee

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Benodebehari Mukherjee (Bengali: বিনোদ বিহারী মুখার্জি) (1904 - 1980) was an Indian artist. He was born in Behala, Kolkata (then Calcutta) — now in the Indian state of West Bengal. He was in the faculty of Visva Bharati University at Santiniketan (the university started by Rabindranath Tagore).

(for all references to information in this article - partha chatterjee external link provided) Benod Behari was the student of Nandlal Bose. He was myopic on one eye and blind in the other eye. At the age of 54 in the year 1957 he became completely blind.

His learning seems to have been influenced by his painters from China, Japan who had also spend time in Shanti Niketan. During 1937-38 he spend his years in japan with artist such as toba sojo Similarly he also learnt from the Indian miniature painting in the frescoes of Mughal and Rajput periods. But above all Benod Beharis painting is most influenced by pablo picasso whose sunflower was adopted by BBM. Hence BBM is often seen as cubist. In 1948 he went to become director of National Museum of Kathmandu, in Nepal. In the later years he went to Doon valley, where he started an art school but had to discontinue due the financial shortage.

The only documentary on Benode has been made by Satyajit Ray in 1972 named "The Inner Eye". Benode was his art guru at shantiniketan

Benode's daughter Mrinalini is also an artist[1]

[edit] External links

• exhibition at national gallery of modern art New Delhi
• Versatile genius by Partha Chatterjeeon the centenary year
• on the centenary year
• Remembering an artist of note

• colurs of retina
• Art of Bengal
• at vadodra gallary
• life sketch

[edit] Books on Benode

• Chitrakar : the Artist Benodebehari Mukherjee/translated by K. G. Subramanyan. Calcutta, Seagull Books, 2006, xviii, 196 p., ISBN 81-7046-282-7. [2]
• Ajay Sinha, "Against Allegory: Binode Bihari Mukherjee's Medieval Saints at Shantiniketan," in Richard Davis, ed., Picturing the Nation: Iconographies of Modern India (Hyderabad: Orient Longman 2007).
• Nemai Ghosh, Ray and the Blind Painter: An Odyssey into the Inner Eye (Kolkata: New Age 2004).
• Author/Editor : Jayanta Chakrabarti, Arun Kumar Nag and R. Sivakumar The Santiniketan Murals Seagull