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Lot Essay
After graduating from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta in 1956, Sakti Burman moved to Paris, where he studied at École Nationale des Beaux Arts and began to draw inspiration from the works of art he encountered in Europe. On his first visit to Italy in 1958, Burman came face to face with the frescoes of Giotto, Piero de la Francesca and Simone Martini, and was inspired to incorporate their sense of monumentality and distinctive textures in his own work. It was during this period that the artist developed the unique painting technique that combined marbling and pointillism that he is so well-known for today, imbuing his compositions with fresco-like surfaces.
The subjects of these marbled paintings were frequently drawn from Burman’s own family alongside a host of Indian and European mythological and literary sources, integrated with the formal and stylistic values he gained in Europe. Referred to as an ‘alchemist of dreams’, Burman offers his viewers a window into the realm of fantasy through paintings like the present lot, a remarkable family portrait. Here, one of the younger subjects is gracefully seated side-saddle on a horse, almost as if the animal is also an integral part of the family. Elevating the everyday to the mythical, these tableau-like paintings occupy a world of their own, suspended between the spheres of allegory and reality.
Talking about his process and state of mind while creating these works, the artist notes, “A sensation from the outside world suddenly hits me, upsets me. My feelings grow to such an extent that I find it necessary to give them a form in order to free myself from them. A painting is for me, an explanation that I owe myself. Silence and meditation have opened to me a world where nothing is impossible. I am suddenly conscious of a new life-force that compels me to express myself and define what I see. Next comes the joy of work, the pleasure of handling colours which fascinate me. My love of life seems complete only when I have put it down on my canvas. It is an intense joy” (Artist statement, ‘Indian Painters in Paris’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 4, New Delhi, 1966, p. 12).
The subjects of these marbled paintings were frequently drawn from Burman’s own family alongside a host of Indian and European mythological and literary sources, integrated with the formal and stylistic values he gained in Europe. Referred to as an ‘alchemist of dreams’, Burman offers his viewers a window into the realm of fantasy through paintings like the present lot, a remarkable family portrait. Here, one of the younger subjects is gracefully seated side-saddle on a horse, almost as if the animal is also an integral part of the family. Elevating the everyday to the mythical, these tableau-like paintings occupy a world of their own, suspended between the spheres of allegory and reality.
Talking about his process and state of mind while creating these works, the artist notes, “A sensation from the outside world suddenly hits me, upsets me. My feelings grow to such an extent that I find it necessary to give them a form in order to free myself from them. A painting is for me, an explanation that I owe myself. Silence and meditation have opened to me a world where nothing is impossible. I am suddenly conscious of a new life-force that compels me to express myself and define what I see. Next comes the joy of work, the pleasure of handling colours which fascinate me. My love of life seems complete only when I have put it down on my canvas. It is an intense joy” (Artist statement, ‘Indian Painters in Paris’, Lalit Kala Contemporary 4, New Delhi, 1966, p. 12).