Bengal Foundation is a private trust dedicated to the promotion and development of art and culture in Bangladesh. It was established in the late 80s. The Foundation’s aim is to encourage a regional exchange of thoughts, ideas and practices and to present Bangladesh’s cultural heritage to the world. It invests in reinforcing value systems that are critical to the preservation and continuation of cultural practices. Music, theatre and the visual arts have been the Foundation’s major concerns since its inception. Its archives contain an impressive repository of recorded Bengali music on CDs. Organizing musical soirees and workshops are an integral part of this area of work. Bengal Foundation has provided large-scale support to the Bangladesh Group Theatre Federation since 2002. The Foundation’s collection of contemporary artwork, the single largest in Bangladesh, numbers three thousand. For the past five years Bengal Foundation has been publishing Jamini, the first international arts quarterly in Bangladesh, and Kali O Kalam, a widely acclaimed Bengali literary journal. Recently the Foundation has expanded its pledge to enhance access to the essentials of arts and culture. Bengal Foundation is working with partners on development and education programs where the objective is to enhance capacity, engage people and promote elements of cultural heritage. These endeavours are offset by workshops, seminars and publications. The Foundation also supports local cultural organizations in their work. In order to provide a congenial venue for cultural events, the Foundation established the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts in April 2000. In its amazingly successful run the Gallery has showcased the work of over 250 local and international artists to date, and has published 200 brochures on art. In a bid to promote and educate the general public in the appreciation of art and music, the Gallery organizes talks, shows and seminars. To date, along with the shows, 35 documentary films have been published on Bangladeshi art and artists. Every two years, the Bengal Foundation Award is issued to artists for outstanding work featured in the Shilpakala Academy National Art Exhibition. The first art workshop was held in 1999 with 52 artists participating from Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. In 2002 the Foundation organized the ‘Contemporary Asian Art Workshop’ jointly with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy, wherein 78 artists from 17 countries participated. In December 2004 the Bengal Foundation, in association with the Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and the Bangladesh National Museum, hosted a retrospective of Shilpacharya Zainul Abedin featuring 574 of his original works. The Foundation held its first overseas art camp in 2005 in Florence, Italy. In 2006, the Dhaka Art Camp featured artists from Bangladesh and the eastern regions of India. As part of an exchange programme, Bengal Foundation and Khoj-Kolkata teamed up in 2008 to offer artist residencies in both countries. Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts organized two important exhibitions in Kolkata in 2008. ‘Faces of Feminine Expression from Bangladesh’, organized by the Akar Prakar Gallery, Kolkata, featured the work of 10 women artists. This was followed by ‘Quest for Life’- an exhibition of the works of 6 young Bangladeshi artists held in the Weaver’s Studio, Kolkata. The current exhibition of contemporary art titled Kolkata-Dhaka, organized jointly with Art Trust, Kolkata, is significant as it brings together a large body of work for viewing. We hope this will stimulate interest in prevailing art trends across the region.

Kolkata-Dhaka brought together a collection of 34 paintings by artists working in the twin cities of Dhaka and Kolkata. The exhibition featured the works of Sunil Das, Dhiraj Chaudhury, Amitabh SenGupta, Arputha Rani Sengupta, Sunil De, Sibaprsad Karchaudhury, Samir Aich, Aditya Basak, Tapan Mitra, Dipali Bhattacharya, Ashoke Mullick, Pulak Ghosh, Rathin Kanji, Samir Roy, Shankar S, Abdullah Sk, Bratati Mukherjee from Kolkata and Aminul Islam, Qayyum Chowdhury, Syed Jahangir, Hashem Khan, Rafiqun Nabi, Monirul Islam, Mahmudul Haque, Kalidas Karmakar, Chandra Shekhar Dey, Farida Zaman, Mohammad Eunus, Rokeya Sultana, Shishir Bhattacharjee, Kanak Chanpa Chakma, Mohammad Iqbal, Iffat Ara Dewan and Md. Anisuzzaman from Dhaka.

Date: 17.02.2009 – 22.02.2009
Venue: Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata, India
Organiser: Bengal Foundation