Canvas and the city

Bikash Bhattacharjee's strength lies in his ability to invoke a dream-world.

Realism in Indian modern art did not have a more worthy exponent than Bikash Bhattacharjee.

The extraordinary technical finesse of this eminent artist who died in December last year, his facility with almost every medium (oil, watercolour, crayon, charcoal), and his mastery over drawing and colour, are all over the 30 canvases that form part of a retrospective of his works at the CIMA Gallery in Kolkata.

The exhibits, culled from the gallery's own store as well as from private collectors, pan 40 years, from 1959 to 2000, the year Bhattacharjee had his first stroke and also his last solo exhibition.

The retrospective is also representative of the artist's development over the decades "" there are four paintings from the well-known doll series of the '70s, one from the Durga series, a couple from the Naxalite phase, a number of portraits (including one of Indira Gandhi) and even a rare abstract. There are also the illustrations from Dekhi Nai Phire, the fictional biography of Ramkinkar Baij for which he collaborated with writer Samaresh Basu.

But if realism was Bikash Bhattacharjee's forte, his strength lay in his ability to invoke a kind of dream-world; and his power lay in the way he could subsume all of this into a vision that was political, social, moral and humane.

"Stenographer", a small crayon-on-paper work (1984), is a good example of a straight-forward representation of an urban working woman, dressed fashionably in a sleeveless blouse and sari. But the eyes are eerie with their tawny light and a thick frame of black-mascara-lined lashes. And her hands, with a darker tone, look bestial.

What stands out is how much Kolkata shaped Bhattacharjee's art and the city's psyche that was captured in his paintings. He painted the squalor and the general malaise of the city, its once-grand buildings, now a heap of grey crumbling walls, and its people, especially the middle-class, with understanding, passion and anger.

Take his Durga paintings in which he painted women, even prostitutes, with a third eye on the forehead "" a pointer to their inner divinity.

It is evidence of how Bhattacharjee forged an urban mythology, a fusion of idioms from contemporary life, Hindu and Christian mythology. It's the same with the doll series where the innocent-looking toys become an alter-ego for lost innocence.

RATE OF THE ART - CIV

This work "Cityscape" (oil on canvas, 1963-4, 82X101.6), an abstract, sold for Rs 72 lakh at Osian's Masterpieces & Museum Quality Series Auction in Mumbai on January 31, 2007

Prices: Around Rs 25 lakh for the canvases, and Rs 8 lakh for the paper works

Strengths: Consummate skill and the ability to create a surface realism charged with a haunting otherworldliness

Weaknesses: Realism, portrait-painting is not exactly fashionable