Blood Light Studio Paintings Dealer and Reseller Paintings

Tibetan Thangka

Here are Todays Great Tibetan Thangka Deals

More Great Information on Tibetan Thangka:

To know the splendid figure of Tibetan literary

The poet, scholar and revolutionary Gendun Chopel (1903-51) was by any standards an exceptional figure. In Tibet he wrote a treatise against Gelukpa doctrine and pursued a radical position on literary and political matters for which he was held in deep suspicion by the Tibetan authorities. Among his many accomplishments he was also a trained artist who had perfected the iconography and techniques of thangka painting in Tibet. We had to learn something about these knowledge in
himalayan tours
. When Rahul Sankrityayana met Chopel there in 1934 he noted that 'having studied and mastered traditional painting, he quickly learnt the new style'. Unfortunately the Indian scholar does not specify what this 'new style' consisted of, but it may have been an early version of the realism which Chopel's student Jampa later used at the Norbulingka. Clearly Chopel had eclectic tastes and prided himself on his ability to absorb lessons from diverse sources. This was clearly the case when in 1935 he travelled to India and spent twelve years there pursuing a wide range of interests, including politics, translation and the visual arts.

Whilst visiting sites associated with the Buddha in India Chopel absorbed 'artistic influences from the buddhas of Mathura and the cave painting of Ajanta to the luminous mystical Himalayan water colours painted by Nicholas Roerich, and even to Russian icons'. Few of Chopel's works survive, but the flowing line drawings from his 1938 sketchbook provide some indication of the direction his work had taken after a few years in India. Karmay concludes that these drawings were inspired both by traditional Tibetan painting and a keen observation of the human figure', but, according to an anecdote related by Fany Mukherjee (a photographer who travelled with Chopel, Rahula Sankrityayana and the artist Kanwal Krishna to southern Tibet in 1938 ), life-class style 'observation' was not the only way in which he worked:

dGe-'dun Chos-'phel said the most important thing is concentration. The mind must be totally absorbed in the subject. One day he said that he would show me what he meant. He went to the market and bought a bottle of arak, he started to drink. He drank and drank and kept asking whether his face had gone red yet. By the last drop he was quite inebriated. He stripped off stark naked and sat down and started to draw; he drew a perfect figure of a man starting off at one fingertip and going all round in one continuous line until he ended back up at the fingertip again. We should understand the history of Tibetan arts and culture since it was an important part of
Himalayan trekking tours
.