A fortnight-long exhibition, showcasing rare photos of Noble Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, digital collections of his paintings and an array of selected books, concluded here yesterday.
The exhibition titled 'Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore: A Visionary, Artist and Poet', was organised by Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) and Tripura Government Museum. It was inaugurated by Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar in the presence of IGNCA Director Dr. P R Goswami and other dignitaries.
More than 230 rare photographs of the poet, 100 digital collections of his paintings and arrays of selected books and covers were on display at the exhibition. The main aim of the exhibition was to make the youths aware of the various researches and works of Tagore.
A symposium on cultural resources management was also held during the exhibition at the Ujjayanta Palace.
The visitors opined that the exhibition was going to have an eternal impact on the current generation.
Debabrata Deb, one of the visitors, said that Tagore had played an important role in the development of Tripura
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"I have been moved by the exhibition organised by IGNCA in our museum on Gurudev Rabindarnath. We cannot think of Rabindranath without Tripura because he not only visited the state seven times, but also played a vital role in the development of the state. It is very painful not to find any photo of Rabindranath in connection to Tripura in this national exhibition and hope in coming days it will be included to help the new generation know about it," he said.
"There are some of the rare photos which we have never seen and this will really help the people of the state especially the teachers, students and younger generation," he added.
Tagore had a close relation with the Manikya Maharajas of princely state of Tripura, who awarded him 'Bharat Bhaskar' along with helping the great poet financially.
Maharaja Birchandra (1862-96) had conferred the honour of the 'best poet' on the young Rabindranath Tagore for his work- Bhagna Hriday - (The Broken Heart) when he was merely 21.
Tripura had a special place in many of Tagore's works as he wrote a number of novels with the then princely state's history as the theme, including 'Bisharjan', 'Rajarshi' and 'Mukut'. He visited the state as many as seven times between 1899 and 1926.
Rabindranath Tagore was a Bengali polymath. He was a poet, visual artist, playwright, novelist, educationist, social reformer, nationalist, business-manager and composer whose works reshaped Bengali literature and music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Tagore was the first non-European English writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for 'Gitanjali' (an offering of songs) in 1913.