Important Notice

Bikash Bhattacharjee’s art is marked by its photorealism and the importance of the human figure. He was inspired by the work of the Old Masters and his humanism led him to emphasise the eyes as a crucial portal for exchange between the subject and the viewer. The present lot features a largely realistic frontal depiction of a couple in a dark room but also suggests the influence of Surrealism which championed challenging the status quo by... Bikash Bhattacharjee’s art is marked by its photorealism and the importance of the human figure. He was inspired by the work of the Old Masters and his humanism led him to emphasise the eyes as a crucial portal for exchange between the subject and the viewer. The present lot features a largely realistic frontal depiction of a couple in a dark room but also suggests the influence of Surrealism which championed challenging the status quo by destabilising accepted reality. Critic Geeta Kapur says, “Bikash’s characters appear at first glance normal enough, and the interior space they occupy is a wholly rational one, painted with painstaking, and technically amazing correctness. Until one notices that the figure has the eyes of a witch, or the body of a bronze deity, or the torso of a giantess. Then the room changes character as though it were a laboratory for secret alchemies. The threshold on which the royal giantess stands becomes the threshold between nightmare and reality…” (Kapur in “Geeta Kapur on Bikash Bhattacharjee”, Manasij Majumder, Close to Events: Works of Bikash Bhattacharjee, New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2007, p. 134)

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