Jamini Roy went through a phase of monochrome brush drawings during which he purified the quality of his line and trained it to express volume and movement without sacrificing its power to decorative elegance without direct imitation he gave to his work the monumental power of images.
Rudy Von Laydon
Grosvenor Gallery is pleased to present Monochrome, and exhibition of black and white paintings by the Indian artist Jamini Roy (1887-1972). The exhibition will run at the gallery in London from Wednesday 29 April - Friday 16 May 2025.
Although typically recognised for his brightly coloured, exuberant paintings of Indian subjects, mythologies, and folk traditions, Jamini Roy also created a body of relatively minimalist works in black and white. Using natural pigments-lime and lamp black in the case of his monochrome works-he painted his characteristic subjects stripped of ornamentation and saturation, floating against subtly graded backgrounds. This is a rare opportunity to see a collection of these paintings together in one place.