Untitled (Bride)

Regarded as one of India's most talented surrealists, Bikash Bhattacharjee uses a photo-realistic technique to create macabre and often chimerical depictions of life in India, particularly through figures of the subaltern and women. "The relationship between woman and goddess runs through the artist's oeuvre: beginning with paintings of the woman hidden within the goddess, he progresses to images of ordinary women possessed with divine power [...] Undefined (perhaps indefinable) emotion and an indirect (often inscrutable) method of allusion are conveyed through a slight twist of mouth, the hair or the eyes, painted often without pupils - slight dislocations that lift the work from being a 'mere' portrait." (A. Jhaveri, A Guide to 101 Modern & Contemporary Indian Artists, Mumbai, 2005, p. 20)

This striking work on paper appears to be a study for the artist's 1979 painting titled The Bride, which was displayed at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, as part of the seminal 1982 exhibition Contemporary Indian Art. Although she wears a traditional red Bengali wedding sari and ornamentation, including her painted brows and mukut or crown, the bride's eyes are feline and yellow. She commands the viewer's attention, and with her brightly painted lips open, seems ready to challenge any traditional impression of a demure, deferential wife-to-be.