Rethinking the Bengal School of Art through the Life and Art of Ardhendu Prasad Banerjee
What can art from private archives held by the family of an overlooked Bengal School artist tell us today? Hear from Mittal Institute Bajaj Fellow Prof. Nilanjana Mukherjee on the life and art of her maternal grandfather, the late Ardhendu Prasad Banerjee. Nilanjana Mukherjee investigated her grandfather’s story and possesses a family archive of his paintings. Her presentation will be moderated by Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University.
Abut the artist: Ardhendu Prasad Banerjee (1902–1965) was one of the first five trainees at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, under the tutelage of Bengal School artists Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, and Asit Kumar Haldar. His granddaughter Nilanjana Mukherjee will explore concepts related to the artist’s profession, status, and role in a newly emerging post-colonial state. She will argue how he displayed outstanding promise and was acknowledged for his talent in his early years at the art school Santiniketan but still found it challenging to later make a living from his art amidst the transforming urban landscape of Kolkata, grappling with war, famine, and refugees within a newly constituted nation-state. The life stories and struggles of this overlooked artist reflect the transition and emergence of new structures of patronage in post-independence India and the role of formal institutions as guardians of national culture.
About the Bengal School of Art: Long before terms like ‘Asia as Method’ became popular, thinkers in Santiniketan in colonial India were reflecting on ideas to integrate culturally diverse paradigms within a framework of counter-colonial imagination concerning what could constitute a national or deshi or swadeshi style. Building on a preexisting meshwork of interregional ties rooted in a history of cross-cultural pan-Asian connection, art and aesthetics in Santiniketan revitalized and enriched old interregional exchanges throughout history.
This event is co-sponsored by the Asia Center at Harvard University and a workshop on “Indian Ocean Worlds” held at Harvard Griffin GSAS.