This painting titled ‘Alpana’ is attributed to Benode Behari Mukherjee. He was one of the most prominent and leading figures of modern Indian art and was associated with the Santiniketan school. Mukherjee was an alumnus of Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan under Nandalal Bose and developed an artistic expression rooted in an observation of his everyday life, nature, and ordinary people. Mukherjee suffered from an illness in his childhood that affected his vision and made him blind in one eye and myopic in the other. His work was also influenced by East Asian calligraphy and wash techniques which is clearly reflected in visible in the use of lines and fluid colours in his artworks. This painting depicts a woman rendered in a very simple portrayal. She is shown making alpana, which refers to a kind of decoration made of rice powder on the floors of the house. Mukherjee has used washes of brown, green, black and bright red allowing for a vibrant and vivid imagery. The composition seems particularly interesting because it combines abstraction and figuration. Through this portrayal of an everyday routine of women across the country, the artist has provided a striking and unique take of the practice. The spontaneous treatment of colours and strokes in the artwork reflects Mukherjee's interest in calligraphic line and his ability to capture the essence of a scene with remarkable precision. His artworks could also be rooted in his training at Santiniketan which must have encouraged precisely this close engagement with people and the surrounding environment. Overall, the painting demonstrates Mukherjee's modernist approach and how he transforms an ordinary human scene into a brilliant composition of line, colour and form in his artworks.
As an alumnus and later a pioneering educator at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, Mukherjee's work was deeply rooted in observing ordinary people, local nature, and local communities. Despite suffering from severe vision impairment throughout his life (and losing his eyesight entirely later in 1957), his "inner eye" allowed him to capture the spontaneous gestures of everyday Indian life with exceptional precision. The artwork depicts a woman engaged in the daily routine of making alpana—a sacred form of ritualistic floor decoration made using liquefied rice paste, widely practiced across Bengal and other parts of India.
