Sakti Burman

Atlanta, Georgia, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest, March - May, 2011                                                                         The College of New Jersey, October - December 2012

R. Brown, Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest, Oglethorpe University Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, 2010, illustration p. 95

Scattered minor scratches and some very small accretions are visible across the surface of the canvas upon very close inspection. This work is in good condition overall, as viewed.
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Sakti Burman was born in Kolkata in 1935, where he attended the Government Art College, before moving to Paris on a scholarship awarded to him by the French Government. Although Burman remains in France to this day, the artist’s ever present affinity with his homeland is always visible in his work. 

'The beauty of the landscape and colourful social and religious festivals fascinated him and left a deep impression on his sensitive mind. That was the time, perhaps, when the artist in him was born - the trees, the birds and the animals; the flowers; the open water bodies and the boats, the flutists and drummer boys – all essence of his images'. ('Sakti Burman's World', The Hindu Magazine, 22 June, 2003)

Through his distinctive palette and depiction of fantastical figures Burman draws his viewer into a dream-like universe. His paintings seem to occupy a world of their own, suspended between the spheres of myth and reality.

'Sakti Burman's spirit is one in which poetical and interior meditation, harmonies of sounds and his dream and reflections, mingle together and form an image full of colour, fantasy, designs, variety, fragments of stories at the same time, an invitation to silent, discreet and joyous contemplation of the realities.' (L. Calvero, Sakti Burman, Paris 1984)