Thirty-six is hardly a die-able age, to borrow Arundhati Roy's phrase. Particularly for an artist. Ponder, for a moment, what art would have lost if the likes of Monet and Gauguin, Picasso and Mondrian - not to mention da Vinci and Michelangelo - had died before 40. Nikhil Biswas (1930-1966) may not belong among such all-time icons; may not have ripened into a Jamini Roy, perhaps, or even a Raza. But then, who knows where his youthful, sometimes brooding, sometimes exuberant, explorations would have led him?
Chitrakoot Gallery, which hosted a show of his paintings, doesn't worry about their provenance because these come from its own collection. The viewer, spared the forensic anxiety of the buyer, could surrender himself to the magnetism of the brushstrokes. Biswas studied in Calcutta's Government College of Art and Craft but seems to have assimilated the lessons of such Shantiniketan masters as Binod Behari Mukherjee and the fluent, muted sketchiness that marks East Asian landscapes.
It's no surprise that this fervent humanist preferred figuration, particularly the symbolism of horses, bulls and circus clowns. The lines of the horse in No 37, for example, blithely balletic but charged with brio, radiate his creative impulse. On the other hand, The Women Bathers at Kopai River reveals, in its inky, distilled brevity, and the lateral sweeps of the brush as it skips away from the paper, a deeply romantic temperament. But his quest had also taken him beyond form: to spare, reflective landscapes (No 24) or urgent, restless abstraction. Like No 23, for example, with its tumultuous blue-greens splintering into textured trails. Or No 31, where a thick shower of dark, dry tones seems to come tearing down. Hence the thought: where would a generous time limit have taken him?
Time has been kinder to his junior contemporary, Jogen Chowdhury, still youthful at 79 and a participant in Compelling Gestures, hosted by a new white cube in the city, Janus. Interestingly, along with his spare drawings in this show, what is to be noted is his influence on younger artists. Like Arghapriya Majumdar and the tumescent flesh in his brutal portraits. And even Samir Aich, who has his own idiom, but strays close to Chowdhury, particularly in his Untitled still life that, in fact, lusts after life. His Cleopatra goes to the style bank that's open to all, Picasso.
Sheema Barua's semi-abstract Expressionism, with its resonance of de Kooning's cathartic strokes, has a palpable vigour that makes one wonder why she's not seen more often. The challenge before her is to put a distinctly individual stamp on it. That, in a sense, is what confronts Habibur Rehman, too, though his mixed media works on paper with their scribbly lines, fragments of figures and high-decibel reds, aren't to be passed over. Chandra Bhattacharjee's undoubted skill hasn't quite taken him beyond rather tame images. But Siddhartha Ghosh, another artist not seen too frequently, offers a rewarding set of monochrome prints, though the ironic, edgy, squint that fashions them is clearly European.
The two sculptors, Prasun Ghosh and Sumitabha Pal, come up with noteworthy pieces. The inscrutability of Ghosh's eyeless half faces recalls the Easter Island heads. Pal takes the hand - usually a symbol of care and protection - as a motif from which a socio-political conceit emerges. Bloated into a bundle with fat fingers - the stumpy thumb resembling a Shiva linga - it becomes self-indulgent, rapacious. The second work, Assembly (picture), is more powerful as an allegory. The concentric circle of raised arms warns of the manipulation of minds through a frightening spectre: the frenzied, clamorous, thunderous support of leaders that suspends critical thinking, drowns dissent and lays the foundation of fascism.
