Kolkata, Oct 24 Noted painter Jogen Chowdhury, who has been battling blood cancer for over a year, was put on ventilator support at a Kolkata hospital on Saturday, sources at the medical establishment said.
The octogenarian artist is being treated at the hospital in the Anandapur area, where he was admitted around the time of Durga Puja after developing a urinary tract infection, they said.
“Chowdhury’s condition is serious, and he has been put on ventilator support. He is under close medical observation,” a hospital official told PTI.
According to the hospital sources, Chowdhury has undergone several rounds of chemotherapy over the past 14 months.
Born on February 16, 1939, in Daharpara village in Faridpur of present-day Bangladesh, Chowdhury moved to Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, during Partition.
He went on to study art in the city and later pursued further studies in Paris.
His father, Pramathanath Chowdhury, was a zamindar with a keen interest in art, while his mother was skilled in ‘alpana’ (a traditional decorative art form).
Chowdhury began painting on the walls of his uncle’s quarters during the family’s early days in Kolkata. In 1951, the family moved to Shahidnagar Colony in the Dhakuria area of the city.
He enrolled at the Government College of Art and Craft in 1955 and graduated in 1960. He began his professional career as an art teacher at a school in Howrah district before joining the Handloom Board in Kolkata as a designer in 1962. He later worked as a textile designer in Chennai.
In 1965, Chowdhury went to Paris on a French government scholarship to pursue further studies in art. He subsequently built a distinctive place for himself in modern Indian art and also served as curator of the art gallery at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
(PTI News)
