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Lot Essay
Bikash Bhattacharjee’s practice is characterized by his unique blend of hyperrealism and surrealism to create discombobulating, playful and sometimes challenging images. Born in Calcutta in 1940, Bhattacharjee was shaped by the sociopolitical upheavals he experienced in his native Bengal, as well as the region's rich cultural heritage. Trained at the Government College of Art & Craft in Calcutta, his style is grounded in academic techniques and deep knowledge of the history of western art. His early hyperrealist style, with its painstaking attention to detail, references Italian Renaissance and Baroque painting techniques such as chiaroscuro, which uses light and shade to create three-dimensional almost sculpted figures, and tenebrism, which depicts figures against dark backgrounds illuminated under exaggerated light to create the effect of performing on stage under spotlight. While many of the artist's compositional elements quote modern technological media, his meticulous handling of paint and color reference the work of artists like Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Edgar Degas, Salvador Dali and Andrew Wyeth. This virtuosic combination of modern and historical techniques imbues Bhattacharjee’s paintings with a sense of drama and tableau. The artist intelligently harnessed these techniques to present highly symbolic images as actors on his stage. These carefully chosen protagonists inject his paintings with the eerie style for which his works are widely recognized.
The present lot, one of the earliest examples from Bhattacharjee's well-known Doll Series, lies at the very heart of his practice. The artist’s use of dolls and children’s toys represents both personal and more universal signifiers. The catalyst for this series occurred around the time the present lot was painted, when a young girl asked the artist to repair and repaint her toy toll. The artist was fascinated by what the doll represented to this child in the face of the political violence that was devastating Bengal in the early 1970s. In his early 30s at the time, Bhattacharjee was perhaps reminded of his own turbulent childhood, when he lost his father. The Bengal Famine of 1943 along with the 1947 Partition of India and its ensuing suffering also left indelible scars on the artist's psyche. The present lot was painted in 1971, the year of the Bangladeshi War of Liberation, also a period when Naxalite clashes and associated kidnappings, murders, street battles and assassinations terrorized the city of Calcutta. As a result dolls and other children’s toys came to represent the innocence of youth for the artist, and the tragic collateral damage of those involuntarily caught up in the horrors of war.
Bhattacharjee’s macabre depictions of dolls in a state of decay and abandonment, alone and, in this case, peering out of a rudimentary window, act as proxy for the loss of innocence of humanity, and for the victims of conflict and the failures of society, which are just as relevant in 2024 as they were in 1971. It is no surprise that the artist remains peerless as India’s master surrealist. His works continue to resonate with audiences, using reality and illusion to invite introspection and challenge widely held beliefs about life, death and the deficiencies of the world we share.
The present lot, one of the earliest examples from Bhattacharjee's well-known Doll Series, lies at the very heart of his practice. The artist’s use of dolls and children’s toys represents both personal and more universal signifiers. The catalyst for this series occurred around the time the present lot was painted, when a young girl asked the artist to repair and repaint her toy toll. The artist was fascinated by what the doll represented to this child in the face of the political violence that was devastating Bengal in the early 1970s. In his early 30s at the time, Bhattacharjee was perhaps reminded of his own turbulent childhood, when he lost his father. The Bengal Famine of 1943 along with the 1947 Partition of India and its ensuing suffering also left indelible scars on the artist's psyche. The present lot was painted in 1971, the year of the Bangladeshi War of Liberation, also a period when Naxalite clashes and associated kidnappings, murders, street battles and assassinations terrorized the city of Calcutta. As a result dolls and other children’s toys came to represent the innocence of youth for the artist, and the tragic collateral damage of those involuntarily caught up in the horrors of war.
Bhattacharjee’s macabre depictions of dolls in a state of decay and abandonment, alone and, in this case, peering out of a rudimentary window, act as proxy for the loss of innocence of humanity, and for the victims of conflict and the failures of society, which are just as relevant in 2024 as they were in 1971. It is no surprise that the artist remains peerless as India’s master surrealist. His works continue to resonate with audiences, using reality and illusion to invite introspection and challenge widely held beliefs about life, death and the deficiencies of the world we share.