India, Oct. 26 -- The large studio in his Santiniketan home has windows that open onto a garden abloom with seasonal flowers. Sunlight streams in, falling on the artist seated on the floor, his concentration focused on the shaura he is painting in bold strokes. Nandan Mela, the students' art festival, is approaching on December 2, and Jogen Chowdhury is busy painting the clay platters he has promised his pupils. He typically paints seated cross-legged on the ground, the physiognomy of the features occasionally drawing inspiration from popular Kalighat images, before veering away towards an iconography that is unmistakably and powerfully his own. The sensuous contours of the dramatis personae may have been dredged from the patua paintings ...