Ramkinkar Baij

Ramkinkar Baij (Bengali: রামকিঙ্কর বেইজ) (26 May 1906 – 2 August 1980) was an Indian sculptor and painter, one of the pioneers of modern Indian sculpture and a key figure of Contextual Modernism.

Baij was born in an economically modest family in the Bankura district of the modern state of West Bengal in India. In that sense, he was a Bengali, not an Adivasi, as many people usually think. The surname Baij derived from Boidda and Boijo consequently. His family surname was Poramanik and was abandoned by him in the early 1925. However, many of his artistic creations have been inspired by the lifestyles of rural dalit or Adivasi (Santhal) communities living in and around his place of work Santiniketan.

While in his mid-teens Ramkinkar used to paint portraits of Indian freedom fighters involved in the Non-Cooperation Movement against the British rulers of India. At age of 16 he got noticed by the renowned journalist Ramananda Chatterjee. Four years later Ramkinkar joined the Visva-Bharati University at Santiniketan as a student of fine arts. After obtaining a diploma from the university he went on to head the sculpture department. Eminent painters like Beohar Rammanohar Sinhaand Jahar Dasgupta, both students of Shantiniketan were his disciple.

A statue of Buddha by Ram Kinker Baij at Shantiniketan campus.

Professor R. Siva Kumar, an authority on the Santiniketan School of Art wrote, "Ramkinkar Baij was born on 25 May 1906 in Bankura in West Bengal, into a family of little economic and social standing, and grew, by the sheer dint of talent and determination, into one of the most distinguished early modernists in Indian art. As a young boy he grew up watching local craftsmen and image-makers at work; and making small clay figurines and paintings with whatever came his way. His talent, prodigious for his age, attracted the attention of local people, especially of the nationalists with whom he was associated. This led him in 1925, on the advice of Ramananda Chatterjee the nationalist publisher and apologist for the new Indian art movement, to mark his way to Kala Bhavana, the art school at Santiniketan. At Santiniketan, under the guidance of Nandalal Bose and encouraged by its liberating intellectual environment, shaped by Rabindranath Tagore, his artistic skills and intellectual horizons acquired new depth and complexity. Soon after completing his studies at Kala Bhavana he became a member of its faculty, and along with Nandalal and Benodebehari Mujhrejee played a decisive role in making Santiniketan the most important centre for modern art in pre-Independent India.

The Santal Family in 1938, Santiniketan.

Santiniketan was conceived as a locus for artistic experimentation and resurgence rather than as a mere centre for imparting training and knowledge. This allowed talented individuals to add social dimension and give public expression to their personal vision. Ramkinkar used this opportunity to make monumental public sculpture, undertaken entirely at his own initiative. Beginning in early thirties he began to fill the campus with sculptures, one after the other, which were innovative in subject matter and personal in style. His first magnum opus in this genre was the Santal Family done in 1938. In this larger than life sculpture he represented the tribal peasants of the region, giving the figures iconic presence and dignified grace that was so far limited to the images of Gods and Rulers. In a country were all public art-work was undertaken only at the behest of Government commissioning and executed in consonance with the taste of conservative ruling elites, this was a radical departure. The use of cement and laterite mortar to model the figures, and the use of a personal style in which modern western and Indian pre-classical sculptural values were brought together was equally radical. With this seminal work Ramkinkar established himself as undoubted modern Indian sculptor.

The late 1930s and early 1940s saw his emergence as a modernist thematically well grounded in the local-present, in the best Santiniketan tradition, but also open to a full range of modernist linguistic innovations in art. Already an admirer of the working class he was touched by the adverse impact natural calamities and political developments all through the forties had on their lives. And this led him to evolve as a committed artist with leftist leanings. The spectre of human suffering he saw around him led him to transform immediate facts into allegorical, symbolic and occasionally even didactic images. This gave a new thematic focus to his works, as well as an element of drama and expressive-immediacy to his execution. Coming in a period that saw the emergence of Progressive movements and anti-Fascist expressions on the Indian cultural scene he came to be seen as a radical with a bohemian slant. But, despite his marked disregard for conventional ways and occasional expressions of vexation, he remained an irrepressible humanist who kept alive a sense of joy and faith in men deep within him.

Ramkinkar was singularly reticent and otherworldly as he was single-minded in his commitment to art and humanity. But this did not stop his work from being noticed and appreciated by sensitive artists and connoisseurs, even if it were to remain a small group. Although his work was passed over for quite a while, gradually it began to get both national and international attention. He was invited to participate in the Salon des Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1950 and in the Salon de Mai 1951. And in the seventies national honours began to come his way one after the other. In 1970 the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Bhushan, in 1976 he was made a fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi, in 1976 he was conferred the Desikottama by Visva Bharati, and in 1979 an honorary D.Litt by the Rabindra Bharati University.

Ramkinkar Baij responded to the natural zest for life, and took a great interest in human figures, body language, and in the general human drama. Modern Western art and pre and post-classical Indian art were his main point of reference. He used local material advantageously, and worked combining the skills of a modeller and a carver. His paintings too take on expressionist dimensions like his sculptures, which are filled with force and vitality. While Baij was making a portrait of Tagore, during one sitting, the old poet advised him to approach the subject as a tiger and through the observation suck into its blood. After this, in Baij’s own words, he “did not look back”.

Some of his sculptures are preserved and displayed at locations including Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, Late Rani Chanda Collection & Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta, H.K. Kejriwal Collection & Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, Bangalore, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, Reserve Bank of India, New Delhi, Jane and Kito de Boer, Dubai, and the Delhi Art Gallery in New Delhi.

A bronze bust of Rabindranath Tagore made by Baij was placed in 1984 at an outdoor monument in Balatonfüred, Hungary, on a promenade named for Tagore alongside Lake Balaton. Tagore had received cardiac treatment at the(Szívkórház) at Balatonfüred in 1926.

The bust had been sculpted as Rabindranath neared the final year of his life. According one source, Baij regretted for doing it because there was a belief that completion of any sculpture or portrait of living person might cause an early death, and Rabindranath died right after making the bust.

The National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi has the original concrete casting of the bust, from which the bronze bust was prepared, and dates the original to 1940, one year before Tagore's death. Apparently Tagore did not die "right after" the bust was completed.

When "West Bengal Culture Minister Jatin Chakraborty unveiled Ramkinkar's bust of Tagore in Hungary, he had remarked that it did not “look” like Tagore, and should probably be replaced. When people like Satyajit Ray swiftly responded, the matter was laid to rest".

A differing view holds that many prominent persons including Maitreyi Devi (poet and novelist) supported Chakraborty, and that later the effort to replace the bust was cancelled by then cultural minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

The once controversial bust has been replicated by the Indian government and given by it to a number of foreign countries including Columbia, Finlandand Israel.

Some time between 2003 and 2009, the outdoor sculpture at Balatonfüred was replaced with a different appearing bust of Tagore, and the original bust by Baij was moved to room 220of the State Hospital for Cardiology in Balatonfüred, which is the same room where Rabindranath Tagore had stayed in 1926.

A portrait bust in bronze by a student of Ramkinkar at Santiniketan, the sculptor K. S. Radhakrishnan, is found in the entrance of the Museum of Modern Art in Bhopal, India.

There is a book called "Dekhi Nai Fire" (meaning Haven't looked back.., Ananda Publication) based on Baij's life and work, written by another contemporary literary genius, Samaresh Basu after about ten years of extensive research. This book was illustrated extensively by Bikash Bhattacharjee, another contemporary Bengali painter. A famous Bengali magazine, "Desh" used to publish articles written by Basu. Basu also died before completing the series. This book is a collection of all those articles on Baij's life.

Ritwik Ghatak wisely made a documentary on Baij named 'Ramkinkar' (1975) where he featured him as a political icon. The secret behind this fearless observation of this "Padma Bhushan" winning artist is disclosed by himself in the documentary by Ghatak. A Calcutta publisher, Monfakira has an English book on ramkinkar, 'self-portrait', translated from Bengali by Sudipto Chakraborty of Ranchi. In 2012 the Sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan curated a grand retrospective Of Ramkinkar's at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi. A scholarly book on the artist, Ramkinkar Baij (book), by the eminent Art Historian professor R. Siva Kumar was launched at this event. The book is believed to be the most comprehensive one on Ramkinkar Baij. In 2013 R. Siva Kumar was awarded by the Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi for this book.

24 January 2013 the first Ramkinkar Baij Memorial Lecture was delivered by one of Ramkinkar favorite students, the eminent artist K. G. Subramanyan.

Ramkinkar was a bachelor throughout his life; he lived with Radharani Dashi. He didn't want to have any bindings in his life and never married despite insistence by his parents. While was in Shantineketon he used to have negative remark by his known faces for this kind of lifestyle. He had a melodious voice and good sense of music. Though he liked to sing Tagore song and Lalongiti he also listened to the western classics provided by Satyajit Ray (film maker). He liked animals as much as he liked children. He made Radharani and his nephew Dibakar Baij as his legal heirs. He came to Shantiniketon at his 19 years and stayed there till his death.

On 23 March 1980, Baij was admitted to P G Hospital. He was suffering from disease of the prostate gland and lost all sense of appetite. Doctors performed a shunt operation. Expenses of his treatment were borne by the West Bengal government and the principal of Visva Bharati. He died on 2 August in Kolkata. His body was cremated by his nephew at Shantiniketan. He made his last sculpture Durgamurti during his stay at hospital.

Ramkinkar Baij (1975) is an incomplete personality study or documentary by Ritwik Ghatak. The film is unfinished due to the death of Ritwik Ghatak.