Gaganendranath Tagore (1867-1938), a member of the prominent Tagore family of Jorasanko, Calcutta, was a self-taught artist who developed an innovative cubist technique by the time he reached his early sixties. He created a unique cubism that incorporated figures and architectural forms in his artwork from 1922-1925, according to the art historian Ratan Parimoo. "Magician," is an example of one of Tagore's cubist works. Although it has a loose relationship to cubism as it has manifested in Europe, the painting reveals Gaganendranath's many unique fascinations with photography, architecture, and theatre; and shows the strength of his vision as a multi-disciplinary artist. The woman figure at the centre of the painting appears to the viewer more like a photograph laid over the top of a 3D surface rather than a traditional cubist figure. Tagore's cubist paintings are semi-abstract in that the composition of the figures and the ground separate into geometrically interlocking planes of light and dark. The narrative of "Magician" revolves around a man with a beard dressed in a white robe who is observing his own work as the "magician," and is being portrayed as an illusion viewed through refracted panels of alternating white and black. Brightly illuminated, the multiple depth as reflected into the back of the painting carries a very soft, mysterious theatricality as shown by the silhouette of a woman who is visible at the back of the multiple depth of the painting.
The painting given above titled 'Magician' is one of the several artworks by Gaganendranath Tagore, a skilled painter and cartoonist of the Bengal school, during a period when India was under the colonial rule of the British empire. The artwork given above shows his versatility as an artist. Tagore was the pioneer of cubist style in India. His works in the cubism show a unique intermingling of European modern techniques with traditional Indian themes of spirituality, mythologies and also, theater. The above artwork is a fine example of it. If looked closely at the painting, one can see that how, instead confirming strictly to geometry and breaking down the form of the subject like his Western contemporaries, he used cubism to change the dimension and ange to change overall space and give a dramatic effect- a glimpse into how an artist puts his own individuality into art.
