Osian's Auction Catalogue Select Masterpieces of Indian Modern and Contemporary Art | June 2009

23 5 Bikash Bhattacharjee (1940 –2006) And the Twilight Oil on canvas, 1979 S/d in English ‘Bikash 79’ l.r. 41.1 x 47.0 in (104.3 x 119.4 cm) Inscribed in English ‘‘ - AND THE TWILIGHT’ / BIKASH BHATTACHARJEE / 2D NABO KUMAR RAHA LANE, CALCUTTA -700004 / INDIA’ on verso INR 3,600,000 – 4,500,000 USD 75,000 – 93,750 Illustrated Reference Close To Events: Works of Bikash Bhattacharjee Manasij Majumder, Niyogi Books, 2007, p166-167, Full Colour plate. “ Twilight is a rooftop view of old Calcutta recalling Bikash’s 1964 Spring at the Roof Top . The cityscape here is equally drab but not as in the latter gleaming in the morning sun of early spring. Instead, dusking in the fading light after sundown it symbolically backdrops a neatly dressed poor middle class woman in the twilight of her youth, left to herself in her free time on the rooftop terrace listening to music on her transistor set, her only pastime. She is unmarried and ageing, with little charm left in her looks to attract any male gaze from the rooftops of the neighboring houses, which in her unseeing eyes appear lifeless and empty. Not only her blank eyes but the whole face bears the scars of repression of a young woman growing old to be a lonely spinster in an indigent conservative family. The tonalities of colours evoking the subdued evening light cast a splendid spell of pathos all over the canvas.” – Manasij Majumder, Close To Events: Works of Bikash Bhattacharjee , Niyogi Books, 2007, p156.