Indian contemporary art maestro Jogen Chowdhury's solo painting exhibition "Reminiscence of Dreams," which began on May 27, is still underway at the Arcadia Arts Gallery in Dhaka's Banani.

The exhibition is showcasing more than 100 works of the "Banga Bibhushan" winning artist, also professor emeritus at Kala Bhavana at the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan in West Bengal.

The exhibition is featuring artworks divided into different mediums, including drawing and painting with dry pastel, pen, charcoal, brush and ink; printmaking works such as woodcut, etching, serigraph; mixed media on paper, watercolour and more.

Painter-cartoonist Rafiqun Nabi and Bangladeshi-Spanish artist Monirul Islam jointly inaugurated the exhibition.

Dhaka University Faculty of Fine Art Dean Nisar Hossain and Indian independent art curator Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya joined the event as special guests.

Jogen was born in the village Daharpara in Bangladesh's Faridpur district in 1939. Along with his father, the artist went to Calcutta just before the partition of 1947 while the rest of his family went there in 1948.

He enrolled in the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata in 1955 and earned his degree there in 1960.

After that, Jogen went to Paris in 1965 to study at the Atelier 17 of William Hayter at the École des Beaux-Arts.

In 1968, he returned to India and started working as a professor of painting at Kala Bhavana in Santiniketan in 1987. Along with his many paintings and shows, he has written extensively about modern art and served as a jury member at several exhibitions.

Art curator Jyotirmoy said: "The colour of Jogen Chowdhury's paintings point to his ever-fresh memories of the rustic roads of Faridpur's Kotalipara and the limpid water body in front of his home. Post-partition, his nomadic life sprawled across Calcutta, Paris, Madras, Delhi and Santiniketan, his experiences spilling over onto his canvases."

"Somewhere along the way, the visceral wounds of uncertainty transformed into high art, giving us an understanding of a gritty, socially-conscious outsider-rebel - a different and an unfamiliar Jogen Chowdhury."

"He can create a complete work of art using the barest minimum of strokes and lines, as much at home in a tiny postcard or a giant canvas. His lines have no limits, his paintings seem like a continuum of an infinite line across myriad frames," Jyotirmoy said.

Jogen received several international awards including, Prix le France de la Jeune Peinture, Paris (1966), an honorary D Litt from Rabindra Bharati University (2010), Banga Bibhushan award from the West Bengal government (2012), and Zainul Samman (2016) from Dhaka University.

Reminiscence of Dream will continue at the Arcadia Arts Gallery till June 30, every day from 2-8pm

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