Bikash Bhattacharjee

What humans have not seen with their eyes, they see through their habits.

Born in Calcutta in 1940, Bikash Bhattacharjee lost his father at a very young age. In 1963, he graduated from the Indian College of Art and Drawing. He joined the same university as a professor in 1968. In 1973, Bhattacharjee started teaching at the Government College of Arts and Crafts and taught there until 1982.

Bhattacharjee drew inspiration for his work from his early, dark days, where vivid images of his struggle (the crumbling walls of buildings and the crowds of people who lived there) wove certain magic in his mind.

His drawings constitute a fitting introduction to his paintings, revealing the artist's predilection for forms that are consistent in terms of tone rather than line. Bhattacharjee carefully expresses the textural effects of crayons, pastels, and pencils using the combination of lights and depths of passages constructed with different line intensities.

Improbable characters, both psychologically and physiologically, play a role on the canvas and dominate the oil paintings of it. However, his work is a powerful combination of realism and fantasy, where reality gets the ball rolling and fantasy helps the canvas take on a new reality.

His subject is always clear, recognizable, painted with fidelity to detail, and endowed with a dramatic sense. Feminine beauty is one of his main concerns. But he also creates a varied cast of characters on his canvases: old men, old women, children, and maids. The ability to create an authentic environment as a background for the characters enhances the drama.

Bhattacharjee's women are a strange mix of spirituality and sensuality. The painter's different moods are reflected in his different paintings. Sometimes flesh and blood figures become shadowy. While the women on his canvas are an abstraction, the men seem to live in their own world.

The artist explores the possibilities of oil as a medium and can depict the exact quality of curtains or the tone of a woman's skin, the peeling walls of an old building. He had also mastered capturing the quality of light, an effect that gives his work a superb realism and enigmatic quality. His love of cinema had a lot to do with this.

He creates a wide variety of characters in all walks of life, but his concern is feminine beauty. His use of artistic techniques in European Renaissance oil painting could be responsible for creating this illusion of reality. In fact, he leaves the viewer thinking, his canvases are disturbing and his paintings are an enigma that suggests that the mind is nothing more than a slave that must be followed.

Bhattacharjee is also known for his Calcutta cityscapes which he worked on when he was in his twenties.

He works with many mediums: oil on canvas, tempera, oil on board, pastels on board, watercolor, crayons, and pencil.

The artist died in 2006.

BORN

June 21, 1940, Calcutta

DIED

December 18, 2006, Calcutta

SELECTED POSTHUMOUS EXHIBITIONS

1958-63 Diploma in Fine Arts, Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, Calcutta

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2016 A passage to realism, Gallery 7, Mumbai

2016 Human Face and Urban Space, Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata

2013 The Nude and the Nude The Body in Modern Indian Art, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi

2012-13 Calcutta Chromosome, The Viewing Room, Mumbai

2011 Manifestations VI, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi

2011 Manifestations V, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi

2011 Unfolded Time, Kiran Nadar KNMA Art Museum, New Delhi

2010 Landscape of Figures - Part One, Aicon Gallery, New York

2010 Manifestations IV, Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi

2009 Bikash Bhattacharjee A Retrospective, Emami Chisel, Kolkata, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi

2009 Master Class, The Arts Trust, Mumbai

2009 Continuous Modern, Gallerie 88, Kolkata

2009 In Search of the Vernacular, Aicon Gallery, New York

2008 Moderns, Royal Cultural Centre, Amman, Jordan organized by Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi in collaboration with Embassy of India, Amman, Jordan

2008 Stories, reflections and constructions, ITC Windsor, Bangalore

2008 Freedom 2008 - Sixty years after India's independence, CIMA International Modern Art Centre, Calcutta

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2000 Bikash - 2000, CIMA International Modern Art Centre, Kolkata

1998 Reflections, Gallery 88, Calcutta

1998 Park Hotel, New Delhi

1997 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata

1994 Recent works, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai

1993 Gallery 88, Calcutta

1993 Hotel Oberoi, New Delhi

1992 Taj Art Gallery, Bombay

1991 Tribute, Victoria Memorial, Calcutta

1991 Kala Yatra, Bengaluru

1990 The Child, Gallery 88, Calcutta

1990 Durga II, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1989 Sabari, Gallery 88, Calcutta

1989 Durga, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1989 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay

1987 Environs, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1987 Setting, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai

1987 Oil paintings by Bikash, Taj Hotel, Mumbai

1986 Ella, Taj Art Gallery, Mumbai

1986 Ella, Chitrakoot Art Gallery, Calcutta.

1984 Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay

1982 Calcutta Art Gallery, Calcutta

1982 Chemould Gallery, Mumbai

1977 Dhoomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi

1976 Chemould Gallery, Mumbai

1974 Chemould Gallery, Mumbai

1973 United States Information Center, Calcutta

1971 Doll Series, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta and Kunika Chemould, New Delhi

1965 House of Art, Calcutta

1965 Tata Iron and Steel Company, Jamshedpur

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1998 Multimedia, CIMA International Center of Modern Art, Calcutta

1997 Colors of Independence, National Gallery of Modern Art NGMA, New Delhi

1996 Chamatkara, Whiteleys Gallery, London, UK

1995 Fantasy, CIMA International Center of Modern Art, Calcutta

1994 Contemporary Miniatures, CIMA International Modern Art Center, Calcutta

1994 Group Exhibition, Indian Fine Arts and Crafts Society AIFACS, New Delhi

1993 Wounds, National Gallery of Modern Art NGMA, New Delhi and Calcutta.

1993 Trends and Images, CIMA International Center of Modern Art, Calcutta

1986 Visions, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1985 East-West Visual Encounter, Mumbai

1985 Gray Art Gallery, New York

1984 Retrospective, Bombay

1982 Contemporary Indian Art, Festival of India, Royal Academy of Arts, Calcutta

1982 India Myth and Reality, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

1982 Seven Contemporary Artists, Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1982 Contemporary Indian Art Exhibition, Germany

1981 Indian Paintings Today, Mumbai

1981 Four contemporary artists from West Bengal, Calcutta.

1980 Miniature format, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

1978 Pictorial space, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

1976 All India Drawing Exhibition

1975 All India Drawing Exhibition

1972 25 years of Indian art, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

1972 Exhibition in Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.

1970 Exhibition in Yugoslavia, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary.

PARTICIPATIONS

1986 Festival of India, New York, Boston, Geneva, Moscow

1982 V International Triennial, New Delhi

1975 III International Triennial, New Delhi

1971 II International Triennial, New Delhi

1968 I International Triennial, New Delhi

HONORS AND AWARD

2006 D.Litt, Kalyani University, West Bengal

Scholarship 2004, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

2004 Lifetime Achievement Award, Doordarshan, Kolkata

1990 Nivedita Purashkar, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Ashram

1989 Shiromani Puraskar, Asian Paintings

1988 Padma Shri, Government of India

1987 Bengali Ratna

1972 Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Calcutta

1971National Award, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi

1962 Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta

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