The art of Paritosh Sen was not just an individual's creative journey over a span of seventy years, but a phenomenology to engender the discourse of the evolution of art in the Indian subcontinent for all these seven decades that initiated from the pre-independence era. Paritosh Sen epitomises the artistic aspirations of the entire nation and today in his absence, he will remain the philosopher and guide of all creative strugglers, paving for them the path to set their own journey to lead a life of commitment, creativity and choice that Sen had devised through his own rules. An artist who had inextricably linked art and life together could invoke this essence in his works because they bore the transparency to allow the viewers to enter into the artist's intimate space where deep pathos for society and intense passion for life were sewed together.

Paritosh Sen made a journey of ninety years from 1918 till 2008 and gave the art world some of the highest creative wonders. He was one of the finest makers to let the evolution of Indian art from its colonial hangover and shaped its vibrancy in front of the whole world. Sen was born in the family of an Ayurvedic physician in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh and he was the son from his father's second marriage. He was a part of a very large family and the vivid memories of his childhood days are captured in a book written by him called Zindabahar Lane .

Sen was born at one of the most crucial junctures of political history that was not only eventful but undergoing several twists and turns. Art and culture too became prominent spheres to boost the formative energy of this period and were decisive elements of the roaring plea of making India free. It was that time in the art scene of Bengal in particular when Abanindranath had left the post of Vice-Principal at the art school and was much more engrossed to carry on with his movement in the form of Bengal School of Art and Rabindranath was on the verge of transforming Santiniketan into Visva Bharati and Nandalal Bose was insisted to take the charge of the art department. Well when Sen was a youth, he had an ample choice to take decision of joining an art school because there were already three art schools in the city and one in Santiniketan. But the young boy didn't desire to move in any one of them and literally fled away to Madras Art School to learn art under the guidance of Debiprasad Roychowdhury. Under the master, Sen was able to develop a thought process and skill of two opposing trends and philosophies- Western Academic technique and neo-Indian style and thus the early art of Paritosh Sen till his visit to Paris in 1949 elaborately bears testimony of this contrast and struggle between these two different practices. Therefore it's very tough to identify Sen as we make out of his paintings at a glance today in his works during late 1930's like “Shahjahan inspecting a Building Construction” and “Akbar discussing Hindu Philosophy with his Courtiers” and especially in the painting “Watering a Tulsi Plant” (1940) the contrast of two different trends and techniques was exclusively fascinating where the cubical contours in ochre shades with earthy texture carried the essence of utmost indigenous experience.

The turning point for Paritosh Sen was definitely his journey to Europe and especially to Paris where he was struck with the anecdotes of Modern Art movements. Sen came in close association with Picasso and got the most coveted opportunity to share his art with him. Picasso and Matisse were both famous and active when Sen was capturing the tenets of modernism in Paris . “It is therefore no less interesting to note that Sen remained rooted to the possibility of combining representational art with anti-realism and channeled his experimental zeal to achieve a rare harmonious balance in his art through deliberately created disharmony,” as Arun Ghose stated in the essay “Deliberate disharmony of formative years” in the book, Art & Life of Paritosh Sen .

After Sen returned to India in 1956, he kept himself engaged as a practicing artist and mostly survived on teaching jobs. He remained in Calcutta and in the years to come since then he gave birth to extremely passionate works through his ardent ability to narrate tales as he painted his feelings about the society he lives in. To be very precise about Paritosh Sen as a creative embodiment of artistic discourse, he can be remarked as a combination of Existentialist, Fauvist and Cubist where all converged to his deep-rooted indigenous state of mind. Thus he had the amazing potential to pictorially put together his feelings and experiences of real space and time with an idiosyncratic combination and comparison where tradition met with modernity. His works carried an emotive energy but was never bereft of logic and he was uncertain and spontaneous at the same time. The element of mock later became the undertone in his paintings to cover an extensive range from personal desires to social angst. Paintings like “Cabaret Dancer” (2006), “Sadhus” (2004) and many more mark the clear signifiers of tradition and the changing times with a distinctive message on the direction to which the society in actually leading to. Was it his agony or fear or a sense of withdrawal from the process of hasty transition the society underwent that prompt from different angles in his late paintings even at the age of eighty eight? His existentialist humanism remained dominant till the end in the same way he never got bored or tired in drawing human faces though delivering different ideas. In the painting “When many eyes shed tears” (2007), Sen figured the plight of suffering humanity where the face in a Cubist framework didn't bear just a pair of eyes but many more eyes to shed the collective anguish of the times.

Paritosh Sen was a man who believed in dynamism and had the capability to bring changes as well. He developed his own style gradually and that became his signature line where he successfully juxtaposed Cubic structures with the urbanized folk style though a linear rhythmic pattern and developed it in Fauve colours to attain the pleasure of highest freedom. Yet Sen remained very much within his cultural contour depicting a global perspective and thus his art went beyond borders with wider approach and greater appeal. Paritosh Sen was a great articulator of thoughts and had an equal proficiency of expressing through words as he did through the strokes on canvas. His contribution to the art field and in the development of a distinguished genre has led to the broader philosophy where Sen transcended to a phenomenon from an individual and voiced a generation throughout a chunk of history.

(Image Courtesy: Gallery 88, Kolkata)