Osian's Auction Catalogue Masterpieces and Museum-Quality III | March 2004

83 MASTERPIECES & MUSEUM-QUALITY III “ ‘The Artist in his City’ series is, as it were, the culmination of his quest for significant form. He painted the series of 20 paintings roving round the city of Kolkata, camping at the sites for two days each. There was an entourage of young artists, intellectuals and literary figures who followed him through the journey. Each painting depicts a famous landmark of the city, not excluding the red-light district and crematorium. For once he has used acrylic extensively instead of his favored medium: oil. He has restricted the size of these paintings to 36” x 36” canvases, which depict his visual parables about the city. In them the tradition of modern art has been battered, turned inside out and upside down. The earlier vivid, slightly distorted and stylized works are decisively transformed into spiky and tilting architectural bits and pieces of the city. Together these paintings throw up powerful images and imageries of disturbing devastation. The foundation of civil society, nay the world; seems to be shaken up by such chaotic ensemble. These paintings together make a visual “Inferno”. They depict the journey of a sensitive individual as he goes through a continuum of events in contemporary times.” (Sandip Sarkar, in his introduction to a forthcoming book on Kolkata, by the artist, to be published by Kolkata Protikhon in 2004.)