A painting by Prakash Karmakar

GC. Laha, an established house of art material, deserves a toast for having thrived these past 100 years in the fast-paced times of today. And what fitter way to celebrate its centenary than to open a gallery? The small gallery in Laha Paint House on Chittaranjan Avenue hosted its first exhibition till October 7. Titled ‘Legendary Painters of Eastern India’, the show, a mixed menu of paintings, with the odd drawing and print, offered 46 works by 42 artists.

Wasim Kapoor’s painting belonged to his Jesus series. But no human presence was used to give shape to the conceit of agony and endurance as he discovered their visual correlative in a string of thorns.

The landscapes that were on view wouldn’t lack takers because of their winning appeal. The contemplative quiet of Sohini Dhar’s miniature in a cool palette of blue and green, the underlying anxiety in Ramlal Dhar’s work, Sheila Kapoor’s warm, autumnal scene bathed in a golden effulgence and Sudhanshu Bandopadhyay’s tight composition of a lone, sun-lit house set amid nature were what held viewer attention. And in his two landscapes, the senior artist B.R. Panesar evoked a seductive vastness and tectonic shifts through undulating slivers of paint dominated by green and mustard. Cityscapes were there, too. Isha Muhammad’s Rajabazar Canal, for example, has to be cited for its claustrophobic pressure built up with fractured geometric shapes.

Prakash Karmakar, however, departed from his masculine landscapes to explore the theme of love ? mythical, mystical love ? in an embrace by Krishna of Radha. The artist’s outline remains as bold as ever but its nervous quiver was unusual as was the spontaneous artlessness of form. The same theme was handled with delicate lines in water-colour by Soumitra Kar. Partha Pratim Deb’s acryl-ic abstraction in blue and grey tones, scarred by random gashes, played with optical illusions of depth and disturbance.

If Niranjan Pradhan’s painting of a mask-maker appeared sculpturesque in dimension, an interesting distortion by Ashok Mullick infused vigour into his acrylic images with their jagged angles and brusque facets. And, while Rabin Mondal’s gaunt Face recorded sturdy resilience, another senior, Anita Roy Chow-dhury, infected the viewer with the child-like verve of untamed lines. No less infectious for their quaint simplicity were the two temperas by Monoj Dutta.