THE GREAT TITANS OF ODISHAN ART AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO MODERN ART MOVEMENT OF ODISHA

Abstract

The beginning of the art movement was tinged with colonial flavor; therefore it was no wonder to find a Company kind of painting style pursued in earlier Khallikote. However, the presence of stone carving, pottery, cane furniture making, leather crafts, sewing and knitting in the curriculum didn’t add any native culture, rather highlighted the farcical dichotomy between the ‘fine’ and ‘applied’ art teaching. The earlier Odishan masters like Gopal Charan Kanungo, Basant Panda, Bipin Bihari Choudhury, Purna Chandra Singh, Muralidhar Tali and Bichitrananda Mohanty were the precursors of the Western academic style in Odisha. Their students and the artists of the second and third generations.  In Odisha, western academic style has its local version. There seems a definite route chart that signaled the change in artistic perception and practice. In the contemporary pictorial language of Odisha there is less of Odishan flavor.