Mastering the swirl: Wknd and MAP Academy celebrate the graphic art of Satyajit Ray

We know Satyajit Ray for his films, with their tender portrayals of the vagaries of life, explorations of class and power, and masterful use of natural light. These were movies that marked a turning point in India, birthing a parallel cinematic movement in the 1950s.

But moving images are not Ray’s only legacy. He set out, in fact, wanting to be a commercial artist. After graduating in Economics from Presidency College in Calcutta, he enlisted at Santiniketan, where he studied fine art for two years (1940-42), under masters such as Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee. At 22, he began his artistic career with work that is considered seminal (if frequently forgotten by the mainstream) in a range of areas: graphic design, advertising, painting (and of course storytelling).

His first job, in 1943, was at the Calcutta offices of the British advertising agency DJ Keymer; Ray was hired as a junior illustrator. A rampant creativity would be unleashed here, under the agency’s art director Annada Munshi, a pioneer in Indian advertising.

These were the final years of the freedom struggle. As Indian-made products sought to reflect the revolution, and the pride of being Indian, a new aesthetic was being born.

It incorporated folk art styles, Indian motifs, and depicted the ordinary urban Indian.

To see what Ray did with this aesthetic, turn to the illustrations he created (below) for a 1949 campaign for ICI’s anti-malaria medicine, Paludrine.

The advertisements consist of detailed sketches of busy scenes in a middle-class Bengali home. There is art on the walls, multiple members of the household, intricately etched furnishings, pets, and views of gardens and lush landscapes beyond stately verandahs and windows.

The message is tucked away within the scenes of domesticity: because of Paludrine’s protective medication, the family can enjoy a Sunday morning without worry.

Early indications of Ray’s evocative use of light and shadow, meanwhile, are visible in a print ad for an Ayurvedic oil to treat hair fall, called Jabakusum. An ornate comb lies on the floor, beside a fear-struck woman. Comb fright? the ad asks.

(Ray would create a series of art works for this company, CK Sen & Co, including the commemorative advertisement, displayed below, marking their 75th anniversary.)

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By 1950, Satyajit Ray was art director at Keymer.

Alongside his work as an advertising executive, he spearheaded another revolution: in book-cover designs. After his colleague, Dilip Kumar Gupta, started Signet Press in Kolkata in 1943, Ray created cover art for a range of fresh titles, reprints of popular Bengali books, and the occasional English translation.

Working on book covers led him to experiment with typography and marked the start of a lifelong love affair with calligraphy, which in turn influenced his advertising art — and would later show up in posters he designed for his films.

In stark contrast with the plain, rather austere, book covers of the time, Ray’s feature dramatic graphic art that make you look and look again (see the cover for Leela Majumdar’s Din Dupure above) as well as whimsical characters and intricate scenes.

It was while working on book covers for Signet that Ray encountered some of the Bengali literary works that he would later adapt into films, including Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s 1929 novel, Pather Panchali.

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In the 1960s, Ray would create a number of English typefaces. An especially unique one is Ray Bizarre, which incorporates the appearance of Bengali letters into its shapes. He would similarly combine Indian elements and a Western idiom in the Rupa Publications logo, invoking both the ‘R’ and its Devanagari counterpart.

Ray attributed a lot of this syncretic aesthetic to Nandalal Bose, a key figure in the Indian Modernist art movement, and principal of the art school Kala Bhavana at Santiniketan during Ray’s time there.

In the biography Portrait of a Director: Satyajit Ray (1971), he tells the author Marie Seton that he learnt how to “feel the growth of trees — to convey Nature — and the character of living things” from Bose. He also studied miniature paintings, Japanese wash technique and woodcuts, and a host of other styles.

Crucially, he and a group of other students took a trip across central India during their time at Rabindranath Tagore’s university. They visited and studied the ancient art at historical sites such as Konark, Sanchi and the Elephanta Caves. Experiencing the exquisite frescoes and rock-cut sculptures of Ajanta and Ellora first-hand, he would later say, he gained a sense of wonder at how much movement and dynamism could be contained in stone carvings.

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It was a trip through Europe that sent him hurtling into the world of moving images.

In 1950, Ray was invited to spend six months at Keymer’s head office in London. During that time, he travelled across Europe, indulging his love for cinema. He returned to India determined to make a film of his own.

Through all his indelible years in the movies, his relationship with graphic storytelling never really ended. He sketched most of his films as storyboards first; even the scripts came later. Each film stands testament to his belief in the power of an arresting frame.

His experiments would continue, ranging from the psychedelic imagery of the fantasy adventure Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne (1968) to the scenes of hallucination in Pratidwandi (1970).

Ray was granted long spells of leave from Keymer during the five years it took him to make his debut feature, Pather Panchali (1955). Following its release, and widespread acclaim, he decided to quit advertising to focus on film.

This shift allowed him to pursue a range of other creative projects. Chief among these was his revival of Sandesh, a monthly children’s magazine started by his grandfather, the author and printmaker Upendrakishore Raychaudhury, in 1913. Ray created cover art and illustrations and wrote stories for Sandesh, starting in 1961; he remained deeply involved until his death in 1992, aged 70.

There is the same artistry with light and shadow visible in these works, and his trademark sense of joy and whimsy. The Feluda and Professor Shonku we know will forever be the ones he sketched.

There are many who will not watch modern adaptations of these beloved tales, for fear they may disrupt the intricate worlds he built.

(Shahim Sheikh is a research editor with MAP Academy, an online platform encouraging greater engagement with South Asia’s art and cultural histories)