Baldev Raj Panesar’s acrylics on canvas stand out at the current exhibition of various artists from Bengal now on at Aakriti Art gallery. This senior artist, who was a statistician by profession, was at one time quite well-known as a collage artist. He gave up making collages and devotes his time to drawing and painting today.

He has for a long time done drawings of landscapes and heaving seas and people in motion. He has at the same time been painting landscapes in which the hills and undulating land seem to be composed of ribbons of paint with suggestion of temples, roads and traffic not larger than dots . These evocative works have evolved over the years.

This exhibition is in the memory of Bikash Bhattacharjee. Two large drawings of nudes done in his student days and another painting of a woman on canvas are all that there is by the artist who died recently. At least a couple more would have been in order.

Bold strokes build up Kartick Chandra Pyne’s paintings of palm fronds screening an island and the nudes with the peacock tail behind it. These are vibrant paintings although the colours are muted.

Shanu Lahiri’s painting of a basket-maker with gestural strokes of red stands out for its dynamism. Reba Hore’s paintings on canvas composed of brilliant splashes of red, blue and green are an extension of her drawings with their hints of forms. They are suggestive instead of being descriptive.

By contrast, Amalnath Chakladar’s paintings of swans and cute owls are well-finished but saccharine-sweet. They look quite enervated. Sanat Kar continues to paint those Casper-like images in blue and yellow.

There are the usual drawings by Jogen Chowdhury and Ganesh Pyne too. Two of the most beautiful exhibits are the early paintings of Ganesh Haloi. They have such grace in spite of their geometrical rigour.

There is besides, a large exhibition of the sculptures of Gopal Prasad Mandal in an adjoining room.