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Theatre artists repaint Kolkata’s Academy of Fine Arts white from saffron
The Academy of Fine Arts was established in 1933 by Lady Ranu Mukherjee and Maharaja Prodyot Kumar Tagore to promote Indian art
Theatre artists of Kolkata painted the old ticket counter at the heritage Academy of Fine Arts white on Tuesday, a month after some Hindutva group members painted the structure saffron and erected a portrait of Bharat Mata -a lion-riding goddess holding a saffron flag - beside it.
The Academy of Fine Arts was established in 1933 by Lady Ranu Mukherjee and Maharaja Prodyot Kumar Tagore to promote Indian art. The old ticket counter is beside the main gate.
“We raised our voice and met Samik Bhattacharya (the state president of the Bharatiya Janata Party) after some people painted the room saffron around July 6. He did not support the act and said he would get the room repainted,” prominent theatre personality Chandan Sen said.
“The ticket counter was originally painted terracotta. Now it is white. Let there be no colour. We did not wait for Bhattacharya any longer and decided to do the job on our own,” Sen added.
Several thespians and playwrights including Sen, Meghnad Bhattacharya, Bibhash Chakraborty, Arun Mukhopadhyay, and Debasis Majumdar wrote to Samik Bhattacharya last month condemning the act.
The letter said that those who painted the old ticket counter saffron claimed to be BJP workers. Samik Bhattacharya at that time said that the BJP did not believe in the politics of changing colours.
Commonly referred to as just the Academy, the institution started in a small room at the Indian Museum on Chowringhee Road and shifted to its current location beside St Paul’s Cathedral in the 1950s with help from the then chief minister Bidhan Chandra Roy and then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Apart from a special gallery featuring some personal artifacts and manuscripts of Rabindranath Tagore, the works of masters such as Gaganendranath Tagore, Jamini Roy, Ramkinkar Baij, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Nandalal Bose are preserved at the galleries.
The auditorium, where the state’s annual theatre festival has been held since 1984, once witnessed stalwarts such as Sambhu Mitra and Utpal Dutt staging some of their masterpieces. Sambhu Mitra and Bijon Bhattacharya created the iconic theatre group Bohurupee in 1948.
“The ticket counter was opened only for Bohurupee,” Chandan Sen said.
