This Article First Appeared In Scroll On Feb 12, 2023
Any art practice evolves with change, and likewise, ‘Each change is significant in its own time as it rises over the terminological stagnation or insufficiency of the period preceding it and is in that sense inevitable.’ Likewise, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the young Japanese painter Shokin Katsuta, who was then only twenty-six years old, arrived in Calcutta when India as a whole was ruled by the British and, thereby, striving for a culturally potent scenario. He was hosted by the Tagores at their ancestral Jorasanko thakurbari, which was then the cultural, political-ideological hub of the country. Katsuta was preceded by his mentor, Tehshin Kakuzo, the renowned Japanese artist, educationist, visionary, and curator, followed by Yokohama Taikan, Hsishida Shunso, Kempo Arai, et al. But Katsuta’s stay in India for two consecutive years, from 1905 to 1907, played a significant role because he was officially appointed a teacher at the Government School of Art, Calcutta, when, interestingly, Abanindranath Tagore was its vice principal, a rare feat of cultural exchange during the British colonial era.