Lot 50: * BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE (INDIA, 1940-2006) Santu the Penciller

* BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE (INDIA, 1940-2006)
Santu the Penciller
Signed and dated 84 lower left
Oil on canvas
120.5 x 122cm (47 7/16 x 48 1/16in).

Provenance
Private Collection
Christie’s London Twentieth Century Indian Art, 2nd June 1998, Lot 98
Private Mumbai Collection
Bennett, Coleman & Company Ltd
Published
M.J. Karle, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Bangalore, 1991, p. 16-17
Born in 1940 in Kolkata, Bikash Bhattacharjee is arguably India’s
foremost surrealist painter. Bhattacharjee employed a photo realist
aesthetic, similar to that of American painter Andrew Wyeth, whom
Bhattacharjee admired greatly. Kolkata, the city he was born, raised
and died in, features heavily in Bikash Bhattacharjee’s work. Inspired
by Marxist ideology, Bhattacharjee joined the Communist party of
Calcutta in the 1960s. Post partition Calcutta, as it was then called,
was pulled by both nationalist rhetoric and grassroots communism.
There is a strong sense of social consciousness in Bhattarcharjee’s
works, he depicts the varied strata of Kolkata’s classes, middle class
women, street vendors, heads of state and beggars with equal intensity.
Characters who are key to Kolkata’s social fabric but often ignored
are elevated in status, adorning walls where once only the elite would
be seen. Bhattarcharjee highlighted the socio economic nuances of
the bustling Bengali metropolis, the way only a local could. It was his
familiarity with the city that gave his works a seldom seen authenticity.
“Every painting of mine is a definite social statement. I want to make
that statement in as realistic and as direct a form as possible. I don’t
want to get lost in ambiguity.” (Bikash Bhattacharjee, Artist’s View in
Indian Painting Today 1981, Jehangir Art Gallery, 1981)
Employing cinematic techniques in his composition and use of light,
Bhattarcharjee leads the viewer in to the main protagonists of his
scene. Off centre, sits Montu, the penciller. An earlier work with the
same subject shows Montu as a bottle seller, younger and gaunt, his
ribs glistening with sweat. This work shows a smug Montu, heathier
wearing a gaudy coloured shirt and glistening silver watch.
“What you see is a single moment in time... Painting should be like
this. It should have a mystery, a story.” My passion for narrative
and its sudden arrest was formed during the days when I used to
watch films at Film Society. The dramatic narrative fascinated me.”
(Shubhani Sarkar and Rudrani Sarkar, Bikash 2000, CIMA, Calcutta,
2001, cited in S. Bean, Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after
Independence, Thames & Hudson, London, 2013, p.133).