Thematic painter

Shuvaprasanna discovers the beauty of Indian mythological icons, detaching his art from life's realities.

When a sanyasi from the Ramakrishnan Mission in Kolkata gave artist Shuvaprasanna a book on Chandi (deity Durga's various forms) in the year 2000, the artist's outlook towards life and the stimulus to paint experienced a radical change. He dedicated himself to celebrating the beauty of mythological icons rather than painting life's realities.

Mythology did not stir him much in his heydays but: "Later, while reading about Chandi, I found interesting descriptions of the Devi's forms where everything is symbolic "" colours, forms..."

Shuvaprasanna began allegorising his icons in his works "" Krishna with a blue skin tone in some canvases, a green one in others. Shuvaprasanna reasons, "Each of Krishna's skin tones is symbolic "" blue for the ocean's expanse...."

Shuvaprasanna has been an integral part of the art movement in Kolkata since he graduated from Indian College of Art in 1969, starting Arts Acre, a village for artists, and his own art school, College of Visual Arts.

His style has always been to "conceive a particular theme and then develop a series of paintings on it", he says, reminiscing about earlier themes that dealt with man, time, space and cities, including Calcutta, a city that "fascinates" him.

The recurring dreamlike images of the city's narrow lanes and its rooftops, part fantasy, part neo-realist where the occasional crow can be found on the canvas, were part of the influences of his creative mind. "When you catch the smell of the city, its soil, its culture "" it's all all influence," says Shuvaprasanna.

As he traces his own transition in style and themes, Shuvaprasanna recalls being "figurative and subjective", where "initially the idea was to use the canvas as a weapon to change society, to react and express its agony and problems".

But years add to maturity and he realised that one needn't react to everyday things. "I am not a journalist," he reasons. The mellow Shuvaprasanna was drawn towards the beauty of the world, to "experience ananda".

Post his encounter with the book on Chandi, he contemplated the development of mythological figures using his contemporary facilities. "We are always taking things from the West when we have a 5,000-year-old culture. That's when I consciously started doing icons as themes," he says.

Shuvaprasanna's deities are bright and fluid. Krishna's golden flute in the latest series is horizontal, running through the breadth of the canvas, his tilted head detached from the body.

"The flute is symbolic of the division of the sky and the earth and the detached head is like a planet," he explains. The artist captures the rhythms of the bodies of his subjects and their surroundings, the forms of Krishna, Radha, the gopis, peacocks and cows, bereft of ornaments. "The rhythm of the body is enough," he asserts.

An unassuming gold foil finds place on the canvas "" "an abstract form of ornamentation" for Shuvaprasanna. Themes dominate his choice of colours and texture, where an irrational impulse is not encouraged "" the metropolis being earthy and his icons in bright hues, some even in metallic tones.

His recent works have luminosity and Shuvaprasanna explains the technique of "colouring transparent paper, which is covered with rice paper...then drawing with charcoal and using acrylic or oils".

Dismissing art forms such as installations as "junk, finished in terms of idea and emotion", for him art is still pure and speaks a language as a work that tells a story. Gallerist Sunaina Anand of Art Alive feels, "Shuvaprasanna's works do connect you with the philosophy of his themes and are are well received by people."