A 2023 retrospective at Snowball Studios in Mumbai brought together 200 works by Jogen Chowdhury spanning from 1955 to 2023.
Presented by Gallery Art Exposure, the exhibition occupied approximately 10,000 square feet and included drawings, paintings and archival material.
A life’s journey through line and sensation
The exhibition’s title referred to bodh, a term associated with sensation, awareness and the changing ways people experience life.
Chowdhury’s distinctive line moved between intimacy, distortion, humour and unease.
Works such as Couple II, made with ink, pastel and poster paint on paper, placed human relationships within bodies that appeared compressed, exaggerated or psychologically charged.
Early and recent works were shown together, allowing viewers to trace continuities across nearly seven decades rather than follow a strictly chronological route.
Violence, power and the human figure
Several works addressed political and social trauma.
Killer of a Pregnant Woman responded to the violence of the Gujarat riots.
Bakasur drew on a mythological figure to represent power consuming and exploiting the underprivileged.
Other works, including Man and Woman and Reminiscences of a Dream, moved through desire, memory and the instability of private life.
Chowdhury’s practice developed within Indian modernism but remained resistant to polished idealisation.
His bodies often carried the pressure of war, migration, class inequality and emotional conflict through their surfaces and gestures.
The retrospective demonstrated how a sustained visual language can remain recognisable without becoming fixed.
Across the exhibition, line served as anatomy, ornament, boundary and psychological force, allowing Chowdhury to move continually between personal sensation and collective history.