Jamini Roy

THE EVENT AND THE KUMAR COLLECTION – An European preview. On the 13th of June 2015, The Museum of Cultures in Lugano (MCL) inaugurates the exhibition, “Jamini Roy. From Tradition to Modernity. The Kumar Collection”. Scheduled to run until the 23rd of August, the exhibition is dedicated to the Bengali artist Jamini Roy, a recipient of the Padma Bhushan State Award from the Government of India in 1955, and regarded by international critics as the Indian “Matisse” for his works inspired by both traditional Indian art and the western avant-garde. The source of the exhibited works is the Kumar Collection which encompasses the artist's entire body of work, from his earliest sketches in the nineteen twenties to the final canvasses at the end of the nineteen sixties. The collection, considered to be the largest outside India, is for the first time the object of a curated art catalogue. The collection is owned by Indian entrepreneur, marketing professor and collector, Nirmalya Kumar, who has been studying Jamini Roy for over a decade. He has bought these works and exhibited them to the public with the intent of safeguarding the distinctive features of an ancient tradition while contributing to the promotion of Indian contemporary art to both the experts and the international public