Sunayani Devi

Sunayani Devi was a pioneering artist of the 20th century, recognised as a true ‘primitive’ of the Bengal School. Although born into the illustrious Tagore family and surrounded by luminaries amidst the ferment of the Bengal Renaissance, she was self-taught, and her work is thought to transcend every norm, even the avant-garde explorations of her time. Encouraged by her husband, it was only in her thirties that she began to paint. Life as a woman, the gendered chasm between herself and her relatives, the musings of an artist’s inner-world and the sheer depth of her cultural references, all informed her creative sensibilities. Her depictions of folk motifs, indigenous practices, devotional themes and sweeping epics, are imbued with personal ingenuity - the figures and scenes therein immortalised by a spontaneous, delicate hand and an unerring instinct for line and form. She was among the first artists to glean inspiration from pata art. Her work is celebrated world over, and she is widely credited with transforming rural art by women into a ‘classical’ form, invaluable to the great tapestry of Indian history. 

‍