National Gallery of Modern Arts, New Delhi

Santiniketan

Santiniketan, a quiet rural retreat and the location of an unconventional school founded by Rabindranath Tagore in 1901, shaped the life and workof Benodebehari. Conceived against the backdrop of nationalist resurgence and modeled after the tapovans or 'forest school' of ancient India itfostered learning through a lived contact with nature and culture.

The years Benodebehari spent in Santiniketan as a student were also the institution’s most formative years. In 1919, two years after he joined Santiniketan, Kala Bhavana, a new art school was founded and Benodebehari enrolled himself as one of its first students. Within two years, with the founding of Visva Bharati, which had for its motto ‘where the world comes to meet at one nest’, Santiniketan’s progress from a nationalist school into a world university was complete.

Santiniketan landscape, early
20th century

Rabindranath in conversation
with Pearson during early days
of Santiniketan

Kala Bhavana in early days.

Inside Kala Bhavana,
Benodebehari teaching

Binodebehari (second row third
from left) with Nandalal Bose,
(front row second from left),
Ram Kinker Baij (extreme right),
and other students of Kala
Bhavana.

Under the influence of Rabindranath’sprogressive ideas Kala Bhavana looked beyond the purview of colonialart schools and became the nucleus of an art movement with a broad, modern, orientation that sought to bridge the past with the present, theEast with the West and encouraged artists to explore an entire gamut of creativity and communication from the personal to public and functional art.Benodebehari imbibed these ideas as a student, and after completing his studies, he became a member of theteaching faculty and played a central role, along with Nandalal and Ramkinkar Baij in making Santiniketanthe most important centre of art in India between 1920 and 1947.