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Lot Essay
“Bikash Bhattacharjee’s fantasies are the most this-worldly and also other-worldly [...His paintings are of] subjects where the known is seen in an unusual setting; one’s imagination is stimulated or disturbed. Each scene is painted with a loving attention to light, texture and detail. The compositions are very stable, the unreal is cradled in the real, the pictures are the starting point of questions and reveries which linger in the mind” (J. Appasamy, ‘New Images in Indian Art: Fantasy’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 15, 1973, pp. 6–7).
Bikash Bhattacharjee’s practice is characterized by his unique blend of hyperrealism and surrealism to create discombobulating, playful and sometimes challenging images. Born in Calcutta in 1940, Bhattacharjee’s practice was shaped by both the rich cultural heritage and the socio-political upheavals he experienced in his native Bengal. Trained at the Government College of Art & Craft in Calcutta, his style is grounded in academic techniques and a deep knowledge of the history of Western art. His photorealist style, with meticulous attention to detail, references Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting techniques such as chiaroscuro, using light and shade to create three-dimensional, almost sculpted figures, and is taken further using tenebrism, depicting figures against dark backgrounds illuminated under exaggerated light to create the effect of performing on stage under a spotlight.
While many of the artist's compositional elements quote modern technological media, his meticulous handling of paint and color references the work of painters like Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Edgar Degas, Salvador Dalí and Andrew Wyeth. This virtuosic combination of modern and historical techniques imbued Bhattacharjee’s paintings with a sense of drama and tableau. Bhattacharjee intelligently harnessed these techniques to present highly symbolic images as actors on his stage. These carefully chosen protagonists inject his paintings with the ghostly surrealist style for which his works are so recognized.
The present lot was painted in 1972, the year he was awarded the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, recognizing him as one of the leading Indian artists of the time. A year after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, this was the time of a mass influx of refugees into Bengal. Calcutta and the surrounding regions were terrorized by the ensuing violence, which saw members of the Naxalite movement clash with police, along with kidnappings, murders, street battles and assassinations. These scenes of violence reopened the psychological scars of the artist’s youth, marked by sociopolitical upheavals in the wake of Partition. A recurring theme was the deep contrast between crumbling colonial grandeur and the desperation of urban poverty.
Bhattacharjee was not a political polemicist like some other Bengali artists such as Chittaprosad. Instead, he remained deeply concern with existentialism, and with the psychological and social tensions around him. “When I stand in front of an easel, what drives me on is Leftist thinking, my ambience, my urge to live, and my struggle for survival. I have never been part of any art revolution that was merely form-oriented and cerebral” (Artist statement, M. Majumder, Bikash Bhattacharjee: Close to Events, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 182–183).
In the present lot, dark, toppled statues are rendered in Bhattacharjee’s signature surrealist style. Various semi-recognizable body parts appear in odd positions: a sandaled foot is being subsumed in the overgrowth of grass and blood-red flowers, while the full width of the canvas is bisected by a meticulously draped, almost-Gandharan fallen torso. The composition could perhaps be read as a ghostly wraith watching over the corpse of a slain innocent. Painted a year after the artist’s first iconic work of his Doll Series, allusions to the tragic casualties of war and the crumbling of civilized institutions and morals of man in the face of war and violence are clear. This is as much a painting of mourning and contemplation as of violence and suffering.
Bikash Bhattacharjee’s practice is characterized by his unique blend of hyperrealism and surrealism to create discombobulating, playful and sometimes challenging images. Born in Calcutta in 1940, Bhattacharjee’s practice was shaped by both the rich cultural heritage and the socio-political upheavals he experienced in his native Bengal. Trained at the Government College of Art & Craft in Calcutta, his style is grounded in academic techniques and a deep knowledge of the history of Western art. His photorealist style, with meticulous attention to detail, references Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting techniques such as chiaroscuro, using light and shade to create three-dimensional, almost sculpted figures, and is taken further using tenebrism, depicting figures against dark backgrounds illuminated under exaggerated light to create the effect of performing on stage under a spotlight.
While many of the artist's compositional elements quote modern technological media, his meticulous handling of paint and color references the work of painters like Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Edgar Degas, Salvador Dalí and Andrew Wyeth. This virtuosic combination of modern and historical techniques imbued Bhattacharjee’s paintings with a sense of drama and tableau. Bhattacharjee intelligently harnessed these techniques to present highly symbolic images as actors on his stage. These carefully chosen protagonists inject his paintings with the ghostly surrealist style for which his works are so recognized.
The present lot was painted in 1972, the year he was awarded the National Award from the Lalit Kala Akademi, recognizing him as one of the leading Indian artists of the time. A year after the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, this was the time of a mass influx of refugees into Bengal. Calcutta and the surrounding regions were terrorized by the ensuing violence, which saw members of the Naxalite movement clash with police, along with kidnappings, murders, street battles and assassinations. These scenes of violence reopened the psychological scars of the artist’s youth, marked by sociopolitical upheavals in the wake of Partition. A recurring theme was the deep contrast between crumbling colonial grandeur and the desperation of urban poverty.
Bhattacharjee was not a political polemicist like some other Bengali artists such as Chittaprosad. Instead, he remained deeply concern with existentialism, and with the psychological and social tensions around him. “When I stand in front of an easel, what drives me on is Leftist thinking, my ambience, my urge to live, and my struggle for survival. I have never been part of any art revolution that was merely form-oriented and cerebral” (Artist statement, M. Majumder, Bikash Bhattacharjee: Close to Events, New Delhi, 2007, pp. 182–183).
In the present lot, dark, toppled statues are rendered in Bhattacharjee’s signature surrealist style. Various semi-recognizable body parts appear in odd positions: a sandaled foot is being subsumed in the overgrowth of grass and blood-red flowers, while the full width of the canvas is bisected by a meticulously draped, almost-Gandharan fallen torso. The composition could perhaps be read as a ghostly wraith watching over the corpse of a slain innocent. Painted a year after the artist’s first iconic work of his Doll Series, allusions to the tragic casualties of war and the crumbling of civilized institutions and morals of man in the face of war and violence are clear. This is as much a painting of mourning and contemplation as of violence and suffering.