Osian's Auction Catalogue India The Passionate Detachment | February 2001

58 THE PASSIONATE DETACHMENT 17 BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE (b.1940) Woman Against Wall S/d in English, l.r. Oil on canvas, 1990 76.2 x 101.6 cm. (30.0 x 40.0”) Rs. 400,000 - 500,000 $ 8,510 - 10,640 “He chose the myth of Sabari whose pure devotion to Rama was taken as a metaphor for the ideal wife, ever willing to give tenderness. Her sensuous body becomes refined here with more stress on purity, patience, admiration, serenity, sweetness and docile grace. The frequent dose of helplessness and passivity is partly overcome by the act of sublimation, nearly deification of the state. Thus, the inability to receive fulfilment finds consolation in the glorification of suffering. Then there is an image of refinedly carnal immersion in the same dream. It comes in the figure of a semi - nude young woman shown from the back, whose lowered head seems lost in fantasy. Maybe as an illusion to the legendary mountain dweller Sabari, she wears a tribal armlet. There is an embodiment of youthful, submissive sensuality pervaded by a mood of warmth and purity, as the light glides over the lush body covering it in a metallic smoothness. And there is another, where a little more mature yet alluring woman, full of character gives in entirely to the same ecstacy - unattainable but irresistable”. (Marta Jakimowicz-Karle, in Bikash Bhattacharjee , Kala Yatra 1991 , p45). PAPR Lot 139 So.NY/ 05.12.00 Visit III Oil on canvas, 1981 106 x 122 cm. ASP: $ 13,200 / Rs. 620,400 ($1 = Rs. 47.00) The painting has been cleaned.