Holiday III in mixed media by Aditya Basak

Three noteworthy exhibitions were held recently at the Birla Academy of Art & Culture. One of them is ongoing.

Nature has inspired Anju Chaudhuri right from the beginning of her artistic career that started in her pre-teen days. In her college she had done an award-winning study of leaves. But as her current exhibition proves, she has moved far away from that realistic phase. Here she displays a prodigious number of works of various sizes and their media range from oils and acrylics to drawings on paper of different textures and graphics and scrolls as well.

Chaudhuri’s work veers between realistic and abstract but it is always clear that the forms and shapes of foliage and flowers, their colours and luxuriance have enveloped her sensibility. She depicts the gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, but she also keeps her eye open to the grand design underlying the profusion of petals and leaves she represents. In her best works she eliminates all realistic detail and focuses solely on the design and rhythm inherent in all natural form.

The annual exhibition of the Society of Contemporary Artists highlighted 23 artists, some young, some veterans and some acknowledged masters. Artists like Manoj Mitra, Aditya Basak and even senior artist Shyamal Dutta Ray showed every sign of developing a new form of expression. This is a welcome sign. Aditya Basak’s three-part Holiday series in mixed media showed how violence lurks beneath the deceptively placid surface of our everyday lives. An idyllic holiday spot becomes blood-splattered. Even the morning constitutional is potentially violent, and a holiday in a hill station soon turns into a nightmare.

Shyamal Dutta Ray has moved away from symbols of decadence and agony to an experiment in abstraction in his smallish watercolour. Manoj Mitra in his mixed media He series painted human torsos transforming themselves into a butterfly with delicately painted natural forms on its wings.

Bimal Kundu’s sensitively sculpted marble foot becomes an embodiment of absence. Manik Talukdar presented simple forms – black set off against wood -- and achieves a sense of equilibrium. His birds are elegantly linear. Simplicity came to the fore once again in his colourful toadstools.

Lalu Prasad Shaw presented three rigorously drawn depictions of women. Executed with pencil and brush they have a starkness that sets them apart from his paintings although the forms are similar.

Dipankar Dasgupta presented large watercolours where he uses sand to create a grainy texture. Perhaps he will soon come into his own as an artist.

Atin Basak was the only participant who presented graphics. He created a warm grainy texture in his etching of a decapitated man. Both Bikash Bhattacharjee and Ganesh Haloi are two very prominent members of the organisation. Bhattacharjee has been ill for some time and offered two pastel drawings of his salad days. Haloi presented three washes.

The harmony and order underlying the chaos of creation animates the works of Shobha Broota whose exhibition was recently held at the Birla Academy. Her canvases pulsate with energy radiating from the undulating lines of red and yellow against a white background. Polka dots of the same colours explode into tiny particles. Bars of bright white light radiate from the centre of the canvas like a huge sunburst. With a few strokes she can suggest the power and energy of a whirlwind or tornado. Broota deals with the forces of nature but not nature untamed. In some of her powerful drawings she uses simple brush strokes very effectively to suggest serpentine hairy tendrils of a prehensile nature. Another organic form is apparently made up of tight clusters of petals like the chrysanthemum. In spite of this perfervid activity she achieves a rare sense of calm.