Unknown Artist
39 x 28 cm; 15 x 11 in
Tagore began painting very late in his career. His first public exhibition took place in Paris in 1930 to be followed by a show in Calcutta in 1931. In a letter to his contemporary and friend Rani Mahalanobis, he says: ?The most important item in the bulletin of my daily news, is my painting. I am hopelessly entangled in the spell that the lines have cast all around me?I have almost managed to forget that there used to be a time when I wrote poetry. The subject matter of a poem can be traced back to some dim thought in the mind?while painting, the process adopted by me is quite the reverse. First, there is the hint of a line, then the line becomes a form?this creation of forms is an endless wonder. If I were a finished artist, I probably would have followed a preconceived idea in making a picture?but it is far more exciting when the mind is seized by something outside of it, some compulsive surprise element gradually assuming an understandable form.? Kshitis Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, New Delhi, 1988.