Nobo Kumar Bhadra has developed a unique style to secure a position in the contemporary art scene based on his knowledge achieved
as a professional rickshaw and banner painter.
Bhadra creates completely different compositions from the others in terms use of colours and restructuring human and animal forms.
His second show titled Age-Old Rickshaw is going on at La Gallerie of Alliance Française de Dhaka featuring 100 paintings with plastic and enamel paints and 38 pencil sketches.
In the show Bhadra has given artistic expressions to all the common features of the traditional rickshaw painting, the painted iron sheet usually portraying images of film actors and beautiful animals used at the rear of the rickshaws as decors.
Although some traits from his previous experience as a professional rickshaw and banner painter have undoubtedly seeped into his current practice, yet the imagery he now produces has a spellbinding power on the viewers.
He deals a wide range of topics starting from myth, Dhallywood cinema characters, folklores and in some occasion out of absolute imagination with delicate use of primary colours, like red, green, yellow, pink and black, in portraying humans and animals, which differentiates him from conventional artists.
Through these artworks, Nobo Kumar has demonstrated a personalised way of responding to the modern reality, often producing hybrid imagery comprising human and animal forms.
Following his experience of over two decades as a professional rickshaw painter, Nobo’s many works depict the evanescent days of old cinema protagonists and antagonists like Razzaq, Shabana, Babita, Jasim and others, and their cinematic expressions with bold red strokes.
He has also created some wonderful images portraying the heritage and mythoi of Bengal; anthropomorphic animals like fox, stag and lion riding boats.
One of such experimental canvas is Leopard a Folk Musician, which portrays a leopard wearing attire like a traditional baul singer render a song beside a crop field in midst of nature. The listeners of the song are a tiger and a lion.
The artwork, tinted with plastic paint on board and cartilage paper, also portrays a boat sailing on a rivulet when the boatman is a lion.
He has also created interesting images experimenting with the forms of tiger, fox, lion and elephant, in his other displayed paintings such as At the Speakeasy and The Ace up his Sleeve.
His painting At the Speakeasy features a tigress pours wine into the glasses held by a lion and a fox. The same animals play cards in The Ace up his Sleeve.
‘Foreigners love such experimentations,’ said Nobo Kumar Bhadra, who displayed his first show at the same venue in 2010.
Artist Nobo Kumar Bhadra, an office staff of AFD, wants to continue working on rickshaw painting till his last breath to take it into a universal height despite the fact that the professional rickshaw painters are unable to find works to earn a leaving due to the widespread use of cheap digital print technology.
The show, inaugurated by Olivier Litvine, director of Alliance Française de Dhaka, also features posters of Hollywood films, rickshaws and some replicas of rickshaws.
The exhibition will be open to all till June 26.
-With New Age input
