Unwanted memory

ejecting his stylistic predecessors from the Bengal school because of their tendencies towards the bourgeois, Jogen Chowdhury looked to the more folkloric aspects of Indian culture for inspiration. Characterized by his elongated, amoebic figures and preference for highly decorative surfaces, Chowdhury's art draws equally from the natural and the psychological. In this unusually large work, Chowdhury's reliance on negative space and the intense emotive quality of the two central figures set this work apart from its Indian precedents into a more contemporary vein. The piece has Christian intonations suggested by the prominent Christ-like figure calmly accepting a knife wound from his more demonic companion. The myriad of devilish figures which weave in and out the space between the subjects resemble the cast of hell in a Medieval rendering of the Last Judgment, emphasized by the pastoral images drawn at the far right of the canvas.