At the Visual Arts Gallery, a small showing by Chawla Art Gallery brings into focus a suite of oils by Sanjay Bhattacharya that celebrate the magnificence of Salvador Dali and the stain glass windows of colonial Calcutta.
Sanjay’s oil paintings have a deep and personal perception. If one has to recall his early oils, the images of people and places were evoked with a high degree of verisimilitude. The stylistic link with western realist art was obvious but the personal realism of the Dutch Masters was also marked by personal accents. His oils impress with their finesse and grandeur. There were scenes of bazaars, interiors, of a Satyajit Ray film, dark bedrooms with antique furniture, the dim-lit staircase against a magnificent portal — everything became a part of the artist’s perception. In later years he did a whole series of landscapes, of doors, of gates and even street scenes. His works invoked a sense of being there before, having touched the walls, opened or shut the doors or perhaps once worshipped at the shrine. His subjects became surcharged with a curious quality of nostalgia.
But even so many years hence, this artist is in love with “yesterday”. His works invite scrutiny — they also invite admiration and a distinctive feel for brilliance. His forté is his ability to animate, to refresh and to delight anyone who partakes of his sensibility. In an age when artists are happier to use flat, diluted acrylics on canvas, these oils fill the senses with much pleasure.
At the epicentre of the present composition, Rusted Memories on Stained Glass is the lantern, the rusted door and the stained glass window. But the window is textured with detailings that feel like a script out of yesteryear. The stained glass is exemplary of Sanjay’s mastery of light and composition. The painting is a successful exploration of colour, form and texture. Sanjay uses quick, sweeping brushstrokes to convey the form and volume of the door and the lantern, simultaneously capturing the natural variance of colour in the decadence of the window and the wall. He uses short brushstrokes and impasto to articulate the rough, porous surface of the door’s stucco lending tactility to the picture that is continued in the layering of paint to express lushness in the verdant field. These textures juxtapose with the rusted door to create a visually stimulating picture. Celebrated as one of India’s pre-eminent portraitists, Sanjay’s talent in the depiction of figures is evident in the lantern that hangs in silent testimony. He separates the composition into carefully rendered groupings, in essence creating three focal points of human interest within the overall composition. In Rust and the Yesteryears, the little terracotta surahi is provocatively portrayed in profile, actively and deeply consumed in craft, the musculature of the door shown in the gradations of rust and the signature of the two antiquated windows, adeptly rendered in geometric patterns and hinged on certain fragments of light. Sanjay isolates the more sombre surahi, framing it between the windows, which he grips and presses against, engaging the viewer. He uses short, delicate brushstrokes to deftly capture the petite features and controlled lines to convey the stillness of the scene. Conversely, the door is absorbed in erosional activity and Sanjay skillfully employs looser, more fluid brushstrokes to express the effort and energy involved in the sombre struggle of the aging of rust.
Sanjay manipulates every aspect of the the power and penchant for passion in the nuances of darkness to create hauntingly beautiful images imbued with the anguish of the past and the perseverance of faith in what is left. He interprets the iconography of the past, its inhabitants and spirit with his consummate skill as a painter to create a powerful, evocative composition that is both psychologically and visually arresting.
The more intricately patterned windows of the upper level makes clear this differentiation. The spatial arrangement of the room that he chooses to portray is complex. Far from being a sealed chamber, the room leads the eye into a corridor of the past, allowing a further glimpse into the unreal and forgotten world.
The four canvasses seen together come through as an episode that is set within a contemporary, late colonial house, in a deliberate effort by the artist to lend a sense of realism to the narrative and to connect with the contemporary audience. This effect is heightened by closely observed details such as the clothes hanging from the back wall, the little niches of light and shadows that appear. Above all, however, it is the extraordinarily lifelike portraiture employed, that creates the overriding impression that this miraculous episode of rusting, of decaying with age has been observed from life and kept for posterity.