(Kolkata, India 1940–2006)
Untitled, 1977, signed Bikash, inscribed on the reverse with artist’s address, remains of a label on the stretcher, oil on canvas, 77 x 112 cm, framed

This work is accompanied by a certificate issued by Mrs. Parbati Bhattacharjee, widow of the artist.

Provenance:
The artist
his heirs
... New Delhi (remains of a label on the reverse)
Private Collection, Austria –
thence by descent to the present owner

Bikash Bhattacharjee is one of India’s most widely acclaimed artists and one of its premier Surrealist artists. He makes use of a realistic technique to brilliantly transform the connotation of a painting by juxtaposing varied and incongruous objects in a scene, and accomplishes this through tone, light and shade variations.

‘Bikash’s stylistic stand is poised somewhere between realism and the outer limits of surrealism. […] No doubt an artist is free to use the surrealist tropes to facilitate his meaning and message to get across. But what counts most in Bikash’s paintings is what carries them beyond their moralizing message content. His works have a stunning range of rich and complex imagery in which appear unforgettable faces and figures, which no photography can ever match. They engage the viewer in an inexhaustible aesthetic tension simulated by the intriguing forms inalienable from their intellectual and emotional content.’

(M. Majumder, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2004)