Sculptures by Jamini Roy, Ramkinkar Beij and Bhabesh Sanyal on display at Gallery Rasa

This is Calcutta's first private art gallery that occupies an entire building, however small. The ground and first floors are reserved for exhibitions, while there are plans for opening a bookshop, followed by a section on antiquaries. Gallery Rasa at 828/1 Block P, New Alipore, opened on Saturday evening with an exhibition of sculptures, justifiably titled The Bengal Connection, because it traces the evolution of contemporary sculpture in this state.

Sixty works by about 32 sculptors are on display beginning with Jamini Roy. So while it is not a representative exhibition, viewers certainly can see works that are rarely put on display. Most of these rarities are not for sale. But one can see them in the catalogue with biographical footnotes of all the sculptors.

Viewers thus get an overview of how artists in Bengal, whose training was initially rooted in European academism, tried to break out of its cast-iron mould, to evolve more personal modes of expression. So the same Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury created the naturalistic, technically-perfect woman drying her hair, and the man smoking the hookah as well, the latter being akin to a hastily done sketch.

The sheer dynamism of Ramkinkar Beij's Harvester comes across even in this maquette of the same outdoor sculpture. The concrete piece brings out the strong individualistic trait in this artist known for his unconventional lifestyle.

Meera Mukherjee's quest for expressing herself through sculptural form brought her close to the indigenous crafts. How beautifully she could give new life to a form as familiar as the image of the goddess Durga. Jamini Roy's small totemic piece chiselled out of wood reveals quite a different aspect of his personality to those used to seeing his paintings.

The fluid form of a woman draped in a sari comes alive in the concrete piece by Bhabesh Sanyal. His work, somewhere in between the realistic and the abstract, has a rhythm of its own. Sankho Chaudhuri, the traditionalist, sculpted the rough-hewn bronze portrait of Bhabesh Sanyal. Yet, he could create the picture of grace with a gleaming sheet of bronze.

Like Bhabesh and Sankho, Pradosh Das Gupta was also Delhi-based. Their work has not been seen here of late. Pradosh Dasgupta could produce a great sense of volume even in the small works on exhibition. Yet they exude warmth, something like Jamini Roy as conceived by a cubist. Also seen here is Pradosh's powerful head sculpted in bronze by his wife Kamala Das Gupta. Bondage, where a human form is trying to break free from trammels, is a fine work by another woman artist, Uma Siddhanta.

Somenath Hore, Sarbari Roychoudhury, Chintamoni Kar, Ajit Chakravarty, Bipin Goswami and Debabrata Chakraborty are also represented here, as are artists trained in Bengal but practising outside the state. However, many of the works of the younger, practising sculptors are of an uneven quality.

Soumitra Das

Like, aim and shoot

Consul-general Gunter Wehrmann takes Shuvaprasanna around his photo display at Taj Bengal. Picture by Aranya Sen

The clutch of Gunter Wehrmann photographs on display at the Mandarin Hall of Taj Bengal leaves one asking for more. The German consul-general in Calcutta, says he has 'never aimed for a particular style', shooting only 'what I enjoy doing, like to see or find interesting'.

Wehrmann shoots 'in order to preserve such memories, take them home to keep, to enjoy again later, and to share with others'. He describes the works casually as just those that are 'currently on the walls of my residence and of my office' more scenics than people, and sledge dogs'.

But the pictures taken during his travels in Europe, Nepal, Tibet and the US are hardly vacation snaps. They bear the mark of a passionate lensman who has honed his skill over 40 years taking professional photography classes at NYC's International Centre of Photography, The Maine Photographic Workshops, and the Photographic Workshops in Santa Fe. An admirer of photographers like Galen Rowell, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Alan Harvey and Raghubir Singh, Wehrmann displays a keen sensitivity and an eye for beauty in the most mundane of things.

Take the endearing black-and-white portrait of the dog or that of the dreamy-eyed traveller resting on his baggage at the Cologne railway station. The natural scenes seem to convey some of the photographer's feeling of awe and isolation before the overwhelming beauty and strength. Few can forget the frame full of metallic pink and blue waves washing over rocks at sunrise near Otter Cliffs, Acadia National Park, or the almost invisible ripples on Manosarowar Lake. The clouds above the Manosarowar heaped in a spectacular white crown shape and the whitish blue mountain range in the distance add to the significance of the tiny shrines seen below. In contrast there is the eerie stillness of the lonely cloud seen hovering beside the Twin Towers in the photograph taken by Wehrmann from Ellis Island. The spangle of colours beamed from countless highrise windows of Lower Manhattan with the sky in warm sunset hues above and the snowy expanses of Germany make quite a mark.

Sebanti Sarkar