On a pilgrimage with Sanjay Bhattacharya

Team L&M

Veteran artist Sanjay Bhattacharya has been imbibing and storing many striking images that make up our country, having travelled extensively from east to west and north to south. Although India has changed over the last so many years but the essential elements remain the same, especially in the places of pilgrimage.

Bhattacharya’s new journey, mirrored in his ongoing show Shrines at Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi, is meant to take the viewers in all the four directions of the compass — Bengal’s Kalighat Temple and Assam’s Kamakhya Temple in east, the Golden Temple at Amritsar (Punjab) in north, Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanam at Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh) in south and Sai Baba Temple in Shirdi (Maharashtra) in west.

In addition to these four paintings, the show will exhibit drawings of Durga and Kali, photographic prints on canvases of 4×6 ft size and two of his digital works. Bhattacharya visited these cities in India, spent some days clicking the temples and the areas around to understand the environment. He then made the basic layout and then transferred the whole to canvas. The canvases are huge: 8×10 feet, 7×14 ft etc.

Bhattacharya has replaced dull shades of greens and browns, his trademark colours so far, and included vermilion, bright yellow and orange in his colour palette for these works. The veteran artist says that though he has been painting gods, goddesses and deities but on this occasion, he felt the urge to paint temples.

On at Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi
Ends September 29, 2018