Weekend Image Post – Rabindranath Tagore

150th Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore

As the nation celebrates the 150th birth anniversary of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the focus of the official celebrations in India and Bangladesh, is on the poet’s art and philosophy, the lesser known aspects of Tagore.

Waterproof ink on paper

A special digital compilation of art, Chitravali, is being released to coincide with his birth anniversary. A mammoth exhibition interpreting Tagore’s works and his original art by Indian and Bangladeshi artists are being on display in Bangladesh and India.

The life and work of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore – mystic, visionary, poet, playwright, novelist, artist, educationist, is the accomplishment of a titan. He was a colossus with over one thousand poems; nearly two dozen plays; eight novels; eight or more volumes of short stories; 2,230 songs, of which he wrote both the words and the music; and a mass of prose on literary, social, religious, political, and other topics. Tagore is the only person ever to have written the national anthems of two nations: Bangladesh’s Aamaar Sonaar Baanglaa (আমার সোনার বাঙলা) and India’s Jana Gana Mana (জন গণ মন). Popularly known as Gurudev, he won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.

Waterproof ink and pen ink on paper

But Tagore has been immortalised not only by his poetry but also by his paintings and his important contribution to Indian Art through Viswa-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Rabindranath Tagore took up drawing and painting at the late age of 67. He has inspired generations of painters, yet he was dismissed by peers and critics as a bad and untrained artist during his lifetime. Tagore continued to paint till his death in 1941, and his brush strokes have evidently outlived the harshest of criticis.

Tagore had said:

And he spoke of his foray into art as thus:

Tagore also often described his art as:

In spring 1930, when on a tour to France, Tagore was advised, by some art critics of local newspapers who saw his paintings, to hold an exhibition in Paris. He held the first public and international exhibition of his paintings in Paris in May 1930, at the Gallerie Pigalle.

After the conclusion of Paris exhibition, exhibitions were held in England, Denmark, Sweden, Rome, Germany and Russia in Europe. Later exhibitions were also held in USA and Canada. The exhibition of paintings drew an unprecedented overwhelming admiration in Germany. It was shown in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart and other places in Germany. The then German President and ministers and also Albert Einstein, the great scientist, attended Tagore’s exhibition.

In 1931, the exhibition was exhibited at the Kolkata Town Hall, and in February, 1932 at the Government School of Art with 265 art works.

Rabindranath transformed his lack of formal training of art into an advantage and opened new horizons in the use of line and colour. He was prolific in his paintings and sketches as he was in his writing, producing more than 2,500 drawings and paintings within a decade. Over 1,500 of them are preserved in Viswa-Bharati, Santiniketan.

Tagore himself, in his article ‘My Pictures’, explains his paintings as follows:

Tagore’s Bangla-language initials are worked into this “Ra-Tha” wooden seal, which bears close stylistic similarity to designs used in traditional Haida carvings. Tagore often embellished his manuscripts with such art.

The wooden seal was made up by the poet’s son Rathindranath in accordance with Rabindranath’s own design.

Manuscript Art

In 1924, while writing “Purabi” he started doodling on the pages of his manuscript.

Rabindranath Tagore
Indian Poet, Composer and Painter
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Rabindranath Tagore
Indian Poet, Composer and Painter
Buy This at AllPosters.com