Life and art journey of a great early Indian modernist

Here are a few important milestones from the life and art journey of a great early Indian modernist:

• Ramkinkar Baij (1906-1980) was born in Bankura, West Bengal, into a family of little economic and social standing, and grew by sheer determination, into one of the most distinguished early modernists in Indian art.
• In 1925, he made his way to Kala Bhavan, the art school at Santiniketan and was under the guidance of Nandalal Bose. Encouraged by the liberating intellectual environment of Santiniketan, his artistic skills and intellectual horizons blossomed, thus acquiring greater depth and complexity.
• Soon after completing his studies at Kala Bhavana he became a faculty member, and along with Nandalal and Benodebehari Mukherjee played a pivotal role in making Santiniketan one of the most important centers for modern art in pre-Independent India. In 1970, the Government of India honored him with the Padma Bhushan for his irrefutable contribution to Indian art.
• His monumental sculptures established landmarks in public art. One of the earliest modernists in Indian art, he assimilated the idioms of the European modern visual language and yet was rooted it in his own Indian ethos.
• He experimented restlessly with forms, moving freely from figurative to abstract and back to figurative, his themes were steeped in a deep sense of humanism and an instinctive understanding of the symbiotic relationship between man and nature.
• Both in his paintings and sculptures, he pushed the limits of experimentation and ventured into the use of new materials. For instance, his use of unconventional material, for the time, such as cement concrete for his monumental public sculptures set a new precedent for art practices. The use of cement, laterite and mortar to model the figures, and his blending of western and Indian pre-classical sculptural values was equally radical.

Indeed, Ramkinkar Baij has been the subject of much mythification. His powerful experimentations, ranging from the representational to the abstract have inspired generations of younger artists.