Born on February 15, 1939, in Faridpur (now in Bangladesh), Jogen Chowdhury’s family relocated to Calcutta following the Partition. He studied art at the Government College of Art and Crafts, Calcutta, and later at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Initially influenced by his mentor, Prodosh Das Gupta, Chowdhury’s early work was rooted in the expressionist style of figuration. He developed a unique gallery of the grotesque, depicting lewd men with sack-like bellies and women with loose, hanging breasts.

His time in Paris honed his creative process, leading to the evolution of his distinctive personal style. Chowdhury interprets the human form through a lens of creativity that exaggerates, fragments, reconfigures, and rephrases. For him, the body must communicate in silence. Often placing his figures against empty backgrounds, he avoids specific environments, instead transferring feelings of anguish onto his subjects through gestural mark-making. His dense, crosshatched lines mimic body hair, and a web of veins strips away the classical body’s smooth sensuality, revealing the textures of life.