Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940-2006)

There are minor areas of loss along the right and left edges of the work. This work is mounted and framed behind glass and is in good overall condition , as viewed.
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Bikash Bhattacharjee is, simply, one of India's finest and most technically accomplished artists.  He built his artistic practice on the academic realism taught in Indian art schools but yet subverted his teachings into a unique hyper-realist and surrealistic style with dark undertones that forces the viewer to look beyond mere surface. His command of the painting medium through his depictions of reality, light, texture, skin tone is unsurpassed by any artist of his generation and in a sense hardens back to an Old Master approach to painting but with an updated twist. Bhattacharjee was especially inspired by the work and career of the American painter, Andrew Wyeth. Both of these artists achieved great success even as their work was quite different than contemporary approaches of their time by going against the grain towards more abstraction. Though stylistically Bhattacharjee’s work was distinct from that of his contemporaries, he shared with many Indian modernists a commitment to narrative and the figure. 

Bhattacharjee's work was particularly steeped in the culture and imagery of Calcutta seen in the next painting depicting ritual purification in the river Ganges, a central element of the life and rhythms of the city. The partial figure on the upper left holds a bag of flowers which will be immersed in the holy waters as an offering while the sari clad figure depicted in the foreground with water running off her head and shoulders, has just emerged from a ritual dip meant to cleanse and purify both body and soul.