An exhibition shares how the visually challenged pioneer of modern Indian art, Benode Behari Mukherjee saw the world

Around a month after Santiniketan announced that it will honour its eminent alumni Benode Behari Mukherjee with a gallery dedicated to the work of the visually challenged modernist master, an exhibition in Delhi traces his oeuvre, from the time Mukherjee completed his studies at Kala Bhavan. “He registered as its second student in 1919, when the institution was established,” says art historian R Siva Kumar, who has curated the exhibition titled “Between Sight and Insight: Glimpses of Benode Behari Mukherjee”. Born into a highly literate family, a childhood illness had left him blind in one eye and myopic in the other. Unable to pursue formal education, Santiniketan is where Mukherjee gave new life to the close association he had built with nature.

18 February 2019