Shalini and Urvi Nopany loved the play of colours at cima

After some careful browsing, Shalini Nopany, of 85 Lansdowne, and her daughter Urvi picked up canvases by Sunirmal Maity, Jogen Chowdhury, Atin Basak and Sanat Kar.

 

Sunirmal Maity’s paintings impressed Shalini.

 

Shalini admired the works of self-taught artist Shakila for “the raw talent in the paintings”.

 

“I loved this red one the most. I like the concept and the amount of work that has gone into it. I like the colours in it,” The “abstract” quality of one of the paintings drew her.

Abhijit Paul’s works “The look is very interesting! This is Indian yet very contemporary.”

Urvi also loved Sayak Mitra’s work. “The strong colours look good,” she said.

Urvi followed her mother and after taking a tour of CIMA, she stopped at Babita Das’s wall. “Looking at it, I feel that I can have my own interpretation and likewise others can form their own opinion about it,” she said.

 

Paintings and photographs that got Amit Chaudhuri thinking

Abhijit Paul’s acrylic on paper found an admirer in the Afternoon Raag author. “It looks like a collage but it isn’t. It is a painting. The small town is reconstructed in a way. I think it has worked really well with the kind of technique that has been used. I like the sensitivity. I like the colour. I like the small town with the houses. It is a collage’s deception. I like that deception,” said Amit Chaudhuri.

 

Ashoke Mullick’s colourful canvases caught his eye. “In this one, a woman has a mask on her face and a man is reading a newspaper (The Telegraph). Beneath it there is another painting where there is Hanuman with a man like Narendra Modi in his hands. These two are very quirky,” said Amit.

 

“This is very good,” he said, pointing at Gautam Pramanick’s tempera work. “I like the landscape here.”

 

Amit found Sandip Roy’s watercolours “evocative but conventional”. “I like the way this person has captured the light and space. It is realistic.”

 

One of Sayantani Chaki’s photographs made Amit pause. “It has all the cliches but because of the mix, I like it. There are men sitting and talking. There is no magical light around it. The colours are quite plain. Men are, in fact, a little out of frame as if they have come by accident. Somehow it works for me,” he said.

 

An eye on Cima Art Mela with melody maker Shantanu Moitra and film-maker Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury

“What an incredible artist!” said Shantanu Moitra as he examined Shakila’s work. “The whole idea of cutting paper, sticking it and creating art is so unique. I love so much red. I think it’s Shakila’s favourite colour because I find a lot of red in her work. So multi-dimensional yet everything blurs out when I look at the eyes. They open up a whole new world for me and other stories start forming. I like the fact that I can’t figure this out.” Buddy Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury — the two have collaborated for Antaheen, Aparajita Tumi and Bunohaansh — prides himself on being a Shakila collector. “A corner of my house where I sit with my morning cup of tea is where I have two of Shakila’s works on one side and works of Jamini Roy and Paritosh Sen on the other. They tell me a different story each time I look at them.” What amazes the film-maker about Shakila is “the kind of light-and-shade 3D effect that she creates not through painting but with cut-outs of magazines. It’s like a shot taken through a camera. The right kind of contrast in the foreground, the washed effect and then the characters emerge.”

 

“I’m generally very attracted to watercolours. Since I live in Bombay, something like this really p draws me. I completely pine for solitude like this. Somewhere this is childhood the way it was… reminds me of goromer chhuti. Lot of nostalgia in the painting,” said Shantanu, admitting to a “recent attraction” to artwork. “Thanks to Tony (Aniruddha) and Indrani (Mukherjee, Tony’s wife) I now find myself drawn to paintings and I’m looking at art seriously. It’s very instinctive.” Smitten by the Art Mela, the melody man riding high with his PK score, said: “To see original artworks at this price, I’m totally bowled over. It makes art so accessible. Art still is a very niche thing and the more people get to know about this medium, the education will help artists too.”

 

The influence of Abanindranath Tagore’s style on Dipankar Chowdhury’s works intrigued Aniruddha. “At the corner of your desk or in a corridor you can arrange these little postcard paintings. These images of empty streets, a large banyan tree, large green fields remind you of childhood stories.”

 

Aniruddha liked the “fantastical” element in Sunirmal Maity’s paintings. “I had picked up one last year as well. I find his work very intriguing, very surreal. There’s a dreamlike quality.” Indrani liked the “use of colours”.

 

An admirer of watercolours, Aniruddha was taken in by the clouds, reflections on water, washed lighting, the balance and contrasts in Sandip Roy’s works (right) that he felt “made the painting come alive”. If Indrani loved it for its “ambiguity”, Aniruddha felt it “made for a perfect frame”. Sadikul Islam’s use of saturated colours (centre) seemed “very real and gritty… you feel the pulse of the city” while a Subrata Mondal watercolour of “two lonely boats in moody blues” (left) intrigued Aniruddha.

 

Sifting through Sunirmal Maity’s paintings, Shantanu stopped at this one. “This is one of the most incredible faces I’ve seen in a painting. The eyes are beautiful. Something so magical that instantly draws you to it.”

 

“I have been to Benaras many times and I’ve seen places like these there. There’s an amazing calmness in the picture and I find that beautiful,” said Shantanu, gazing at Sandip Roy’s painting.

 

Dipankar Chowdhury’s painting of two old women sitting and chatting over paan reminded Shantanu of “the world I’ve seen my grandmother in.... The fact that age can be so beautiful and peaceful. There’s an amazing tranquility in the painting....”

 

Dolonchapa Ganguly’s pen-and-ink work caught the eye. “Such fine detailing shows the kind of hard work that has gone into it,” observed Aniruddha. “How uniform and at the same time not symmetrical or graphic,” added Indrani.

 

The couple’s next pick was Asim Pal’s etching of a lotus. Indrani liked the “textures” which she felt were “mixed so well yet distinctive”. The form of the flower, the text and the background interested her. “It’s as detailed as what we would capture on lens in a close-up.”