Pain and the artist

Amitava Das no longer does figurative works

Amitava Das

The other famous midnight's child has got more than his due, but Amitava Das "" born in the same year of partition and chaos "" is a low profile antithesis to an artist's persona.

That painful separation somehow found a consciousness within his being, so that his works "" for three decades now "" have a tortured/isolated/abandoned sense of man and his passage.

Particularly in his figurative stage (he's now working increasingly in non-figurative abstracts), he would take titles for his works not only from poems or literature, but seeped in human tragedy "" such as River of Blood, for instance, or Somalia.

A student of the Delhi College of Art, Das works on canvas as well as on paper, with oil, canvas, working in mixed media, assemblage as well as with collages, the surface often textured to accentuate pain and poignance, violence and suffering.

Yet, he's distanced himself from the gaunt figure "" often not framed in any defined space "" that was his oeuvre.

Having experimented in the past with everything from ticket stubs to tea ring stains (indicative of the presence of man in his works, even in absentia), Das has begun another journey, this time away from the horrors of news that found a reflection on his canvases.

"Younger artists are working on issue-based paintings," he confirms, "while I am breaking away from them."

He's concentrating, instead, on "normal life, nature, simple things that happen but are forgotten".

And so his manner of telling his stories has undergone another metamorphosis. Though the starkness and simplicity "" perhaps even minimalism "" of his canvases remains, he's steeped himself in the artist's ability to stand and stare, or even recall at leisure.

"If there is no refslection of life and time scale in paintings, then art is not successful," he reasons. "A painting is the language of a time period."

He's started to abhor the anger and helplessness that was definitely a part of his earlier works, and forms the vocabulary of so many of his peers.

"Why should I paint only issue-based subjects, or highlight only the negative aspects of life?" he asks.

His love for texture has remained, though he now uses metallic colours and stark grounds to accentuate the visual form. The colours are often bright, but because they use backgrounds of whites and pales, there is nothing overwhelming about them.

"Paintings depict optical illusions in terms of colours and time-zones," he reasons. And though the pain has gone out of his works, the sense of isolation has remained "" a starkness of the human mind? Or heart?

An exhibition designer for long years, Das has always been fond of the drawn form. Most paintings are based on drawings.

"Canvases have many spaces between them," he suggests, "with sharp dimensions of spaces, textures and colours."

Das has had a special relationship with Sakshi Gallery in Mumbai, and exhibits through Shridharini and Anant galleries in Delhi, but he's currently working on a solo show that will be held at Delhi's Palate Art Gallery in autumn.

Collectors who find his themes grim, have seen his prices rise because the economy of his expression has transcended time.

A newcomer to auctions "" one canvas sold at an Osian's auction in 2002 for Rs 77,000 "" his works have still to begin circulating in the secondary market. When they do, gallerists point out, his prices will shoot up.

But for now, he's seeing a steady increase of 15-20 per cent annually on new works over previous works. Which is the industry average for most mid-range artists whose works sell.