Jeevan Rajupadhaya
Jeevan Rajopadhyay’s melting landscapes are dream-like. A colour mass flows over another as the flow of volcanic lava. However, they are not clashed to each other but merging and coexisting in harmony suggesting the necessity of human cooperation. In close scrutiny, the images of hills, country cottages, green trees, majestic mountains and clouds appear and disappear perpetually.
Jeevan Rajopadhyay’s melting landscapes are dream-like. A colour mass flows over another as the flow of volcanic lava. However, they are not clashed to each other but merging and coexisting in harmony suggesting the necessity of human cooperation. In close scrutiny, the images of hills, country cottages, green trees, majestic mountains and clouds appear and disappear perpetually. They are not the images to be found in the external world but in artist’s imagination. The intensity of colours gives the extreme effect of the presented images and objects. The presentation is romantic in the sense that the images go to the furthest distance from the actual reality. They depict the brighter side of the existence. The green woods are too green. The artist adds more to the given reality of nature to emphasize the beauty and aesthetic sense.
Primitivism is another aspect of his work. The sunny rocks seem virgin and pristine. The presentation of white water falls and fog, and blue sky suggest the unpolluted environment. As we compare to the ambience of the canvas and the atmosphere outside, the works hint that we people are responsible for the degeneration of the natural beauty.
His works defy the concept that art is representation of the world. The houses melt into the hills, the hills into forest, and the forest into clouds. The contrary images are juxtaposed with free association as in hallucination. One may not be able to draw line between two things. In a sense, they may suggest interdependency among the various constituents of the world. Rather than presenting the things, the works voice the artist’s inner emotions and feeling. The colours and the forms speak directly to the viewers rather than the contents and the subject matters. His works provide immediate aesthetic experience without allowing us to bother about their significance. The colours, images and forms appear for their own sake. They directly appeal to the viewer’s inner feeling presenting the “spots of time” and epiphany. The subject and the object or the viewer and the viewed are assimilated in a point defying the concept of “I’ and ‘you’. The rhythm and the music of the colours take the viewers to the adventurous journey of the new land.
Date of Birth : 1960, Kathmandu
Education : BFA, Fine Arts Campus, Kathmandu
Worked under the guidance of renowned artist – Lain Singh Bangdel (1991-2003)
Exhibition :
1980 : Park Gallery, Laitpur
1981 : Nepal Bharat Sanskritik Kendra, Kathmandu
1983 : Nepal Bharat Sanskritik Kendra, Kathmandu
1993-95 : Belgium
1994 : Colour Revolution, Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu
1995 : Lalit Festival, Lalitpur & Rabindra Sadan, Kolkatta, India
1996 : Sikkim, India
1999 : Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu & Delhi & Bhopal, India
2001 : Brewhouse Theatre & Art Council, UK, Letchworth Museum & Art Gallery, UK, Hanover Fine Arts, UK, Clotworthy Art Center, UK, Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu
2001 : Hancock Museum, UK
2001-02 : Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu
2003 : NWS’s 1st Retrospective Exhibition, Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu
2004 : NWS’s 2nd Retrospective Exhibition, Nepal Art Council, Kathmandu
2006 : NWS Watercolours from Nepal, Siddhartha Art Gallery, Kathmandu
2008 : Kalapunja (SOMA), Kathmandu
2009 : Creative Eyes, Workshop & Exhibition-Tilganga Eye Hospital, Kathmandu
2009 : Sambahak, Butwal
Awards :
1982 : Consolation Prize-Inter-Campus Art Competition
1983 : 2nd Prize-Landscape Competition, Jayanti Yuwa Club, Kathmandu
1984 : 2nd Prize-Landscape Competition, Ramkot
1999 : 2nd Prize-Ranglal Bangdel Memorial Prize
2005 : Best Prize-Nepal Film Devt. Board
2009 : Devkota Centenary Painting Award
Membership :
Founding Member-New Art Circle, Society of Modern Art (SOMA)
General Secretary-Nepal Water Colour Society
General Secretary-Nepal Lalitkala Manch
