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Lot Essay
Unlike his predecessors, Bikash Bhattacharjee was neither interested in traditional Indian painting techniques nor the modernist art scene in Bombay. Bhattacharjee considered himself a Surrealist, citing Salvador Dali as his favorite artist and inspiration. These inclinations are apparent in his tendency to contort his otherwise commonplace subjects in sinister ways, frequently using deep shadows to accomplish this. Rebuffing abstraction altogether, the artist instead focused on photorealist depictions of subjects often omitted from Indian visual culture, such as destitute children in hostile city environments, heavily made-up prostitutes, and the common women of his home city of Calcutta. “Most of his pictures give a glimpse of a world that lies beyond the canvas which, on its part, ceases to be a quadrangular piece of linen and becomes a door leading to a world unknown – a world of immeasurable depth, haunted by mute, mysterious myrmidons of secretive, sulking souls.” (A. Banerjee, ‘Exhibitions’, Lalit Kala Contemporary, New Delhi, 1974, p. 35)
Quite a few of Bhattacharjee’s oil paintings from the 1980s and ‘90s are sensitively rendered portraits of unkempt child laborers from city slums. In the present painting titled Jhumki (earring), set against a background of ominous black, is a small unclothed beggar child wearing just a necklace and an armband. Her eyes have a haunting quality to them as they draw the viewer’s gaze to her scarred but radiant face. Bhattacharjee held a strong belief in the potential for shadows to create drama in even seemingly mundane compositions. Here, the artist builds a narrative around the mood brought about by his shadows, relying on both his technical mastery and the natural allegorical tendencies of darkness. “I prefer to lay the dark colours first and then build up the lights and the highlights. This process has helped me to give dimension to my pictures to say what I want to, and also to give the canvas the texture and characters that I desire.” (Artist statement, A. Banerjee, ‘Conversations with Artists: Bikash Bhattacharjee’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 15, New Delhi, 1973, p. 18)
Quite a few of Bhattacharjee’s oil paintings from the 1980s and ‘90s are sensitively rendered portraits of unkempt child laborers from city slums. In the present painting titled Jhumki (earring), set against a background of ominous black, is a small unclothed beggar child wearing just a necklace and an armband. Her eyes have a haunting quality to them as they draw the viewer’s gaze to her scarred but radiant face. Bhattacharjee held a strong belief in the potential for shadows to create drama in even seemingly mundane compositions. Here, the artist builds a narrative around the mood brought about by his shadows, relying on both his technical mastery and the natural allegorical tendencies of darkness. “I prefer to lay the dark colours first and then build up the lights and the highlights. This process has helped me to give dimension to my pictures to say what I want to, and also to give the canvas the texture and characters that I desire.” (Artist statement, A. Banerjee, ‘Conversations with Artists: Bikash Bhattacharjee’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 15, New Delhi, 1973, p. 18)