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Lot Essay
Regarded as one of India's premier Surrealist artists, Bikash Bhattacharjee utilizes a photo realistic technique to create macabre and often chimerical depictions of life in India. Bhattacharjee brilliantly transforms the connotation of a painting by juxtaposing varied and incongruous objects in a scene, accomplishing this through tone, light and shade variations to his benefit. His works are characteristically dark and somber in mood.
Painted in 1983, imported Plant is an outstanding example of Bhattacharjee's oeuvre. Disillusioned by the state of society around him, the artist would often paint the subaltern culture of Calcutta with particular focus on the social injustices heaped upon women. In this painting we find the bust of a nude female set against a wall of overgrowing plants. The woman's eyes have been blackened out and her hair is replaced by a thick mane of ivy, the artist suggesting that she is the latest arrival or 'import' to an already existing social structure - the plants in the background representing the other members of the world she now inhabits.
Bhattacharjee's technical skill imbues the figure in the painting with a wonderful sculptural quality. His style seems to capitalize on the idiosyncrasies of photography and cinema, incorporating dramatic cropping and collapsed depth of field. While many of Bhattacharjee's compositional elements quote more modern technological media, his technical skill as a painter is impressive. Bikash's meticulous handling of paint and color finds examples in archetypal painters like Jan Van Eyck, as he imbues his work with a naturalistic perfection that is remarkably beautiful.
Painted in 1983, imported Plant is an outstanding example of Bhattacharjee's oeuvre. Disillusioned by the state of society around him, the artist would often paint the subaltern culture of Calcutta with particular focus on the social injustices heaped upon women. In this painting we find the bust of a nude female set against a wall of overgrowing plants. The woman's eyes have been blackened out and her hair is replaced by a thick mane of ivy, the artist suggesting that she is the latest arrival or 'import' to an already existing social structure - the plants in the background representing the other members of the world she now inhabits.
Bhattacharjee's technical skill imbues the figure in the painting with a wonderful sculptural quality. His style seems to capitalize on the idiosyncrasies of photography and cinema, incorporating dramatic cropping and collapsed depth of field. While many of Bhattacharjee's compositional elements quote more modern technological media, his technical skill as a painter is impressive. Bikash's meticulous handling of paint and color finds examples in archetypal painters like Jan Van Eyck, as he imbues his work with a naturalistic perfection that is remarkably beautiful.