“The images of Indian gods and goddesses that occur regularly in my canvases come to me almost automatically.” - SAKTI BURMAN

Sakti Burman chanced upon his distinctive marbling effect by accident in the 1970s. Spilled water on a wet canvas interacted with the oil paint to create dappling that became his calling card. He relays the incident, “One day, late in the evening, as I was working at home, a drop of water fell on a passage... “The images of Indian gods and goddesses that occur regularly in my canvases come to me almost automatically.” - SAKTI BURMAN

Sakti Burman chanced upon his distinctive marbling effect by accident in the 1970s. Spilled water on a wet canvas interacted with the oil paint to create dappling that became his calling card. He relays the incident, “One day, late in the evening, as I was working at home, a drop of water fell on a passage of thick wash… Instantly the pigment layer broke into hundreds of tiny particles creating a surface of marvellous iridescent texture.” (Artist quoted in Kishore Singh, “All Aboard the Ark of Sakti Burman’s Dreamworld”, Sakti Burman: The Wonder of it All, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery and New Delhi: Apparao Galleries, 2012, p. 50) His figures began to appear “against a speckled, and intensely colourful, dappled background, which is like a stamp - lakshana, if one so likes - of his work.” (B N Goswamy, “The Wonder of it All”, Sakti Burman: The Wonder of it All, p. 7) This oil on canvas by the artist creates a fantastical atmosphere by arranging an incongruous assortment of figures against a similarly textured background.

The cast of characters is a pastiche of the various influences on Burman’s art. Over the years, the artist’s works have been inspired by Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Indian folk and classical art, and Gandharan sculpture. His more surreal works have been influenced by artists like André Breton, Salvador Dali, René Magritte and Max Ernst. Impressions from his early life also show up in his oeuvre. He says, “My childhood memories are always there, mixed up with the realities of the day. In creative art, the role of memory is a recognized fact.” (Artist quoted in Manasij Majumder, Sakti Burman: Dreamer on the Ark, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery, 2001, p. 49) The daily rhythms of a childhood spent in a household that enthusiastically celebrated pujas and festivals is most obvious in the figure of Durga looming over the others. Here, Burman reproduces a popular image of the goddess and her lion mount slaying the demon Mahishasura, something that is extensively celebrated during Pujo in his native Bengal. Below her is placed the god Shiva riding his mount, the Nandi bull, and next to him is the Hindu god Ganesha, who was also a prominent presence during festive celebrations in Burman’s childhood.

Burman’s constant sketching has created a rich bank of figures he draws from for his works. He looks for inspiration from real life, drawing figures that capture his attention while travelling. He says, “At the airport I make sketches of the fliers who arrive hours before the flights or of the tired transit passengers taking rest or fast asleep on the couches or leisurely gossiping with fellow travellers or idly reading books or newspapers… These sketches are like notes I make while I am travelling or sitting in a café.” (Artist quoted in Singh, p. 51)

The artist assembles a surreal congregation, placing gods and goddesses next to animals, birds and lounging women. In the words of art critic Kishore Singh, “And because he believes that ‘an artist must surprise himself each time’, he would take remembered images and put them in different time frames, disorient the viewer with the unexpected, juxtaposing gods and neighbourhood children, iconic figures and family members, such that it would become impossible to tell the real from the imagined. It was like theatre, and the props followed - magical gardens with statues in them, circuses, mirrors, comedians and magicians, figures from Indian and European legends, the Sacré-Cœur and the Taj Mahal…” (Singh, p. 57) Critic Manasij Majumder sums up the effect of Burman’s fanciful works as, “The impact is not much unlike a surrealist inwardness ensured by a mechanism of aesthetic ordering of a topsy-turvy pictorial world”. (Majumder, p. 128

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