SANTINIKETAN- Chandra Bhattacharjee

Santiniketan - Chandra Bhattacharjee:

The hum of unreasonable silence.

Art Alive is delighted to present Chandra Bhattacharjee’s solo, Santiniketan in a newly inaugurated gallery space in Delhi.

In the popular discourse, Santiniketan, is synonymous with Rabindranath Tagore. It was Tagore who had broken the typical stylisation of Indian landscape painting, and given it a new dimension. Not just Rabindranath, but Gaganendranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Ramandranath Charkarvorty, Ramkinkar Baij and Binodebehari Mukherjee have also left behind their signature articulations of the red earth world of Santiniketan inspiring several artists over the decades.

Over the years, Chandra Bhattacharjee has tried to capture and interpret his own understanding of Santiniketan, first with the help of his camera lenses, then onto his charcoal sticks and brushes with empathy with nature being at the core of his oeuvre. He has repeatedly returned to his home in Kolkata with the concept of Santiniketan, frozen in his high-resolution frames, dominating his mind. Examining and re-examining his images over time, he found his extremely personal, and sadly a shattering testimony, of change before his eyes of Santiniketan moving away from the near-utopia of the earlier masterpieces. Of asphalt and barbed wires visibly cementing the loose red soil ecosystem, eroding its resilient foliage. The visible mutilation is only an allegory of the insidious undercurrents that now roil the 'abode of peace.'

“Cities will sprout where trees were king. Factories will harden forest floors. Nature will give way to the drum roll of development. All that is inevitable. But what if a few wondrous places were simply left alone? Sheltered from the assault of progress? Maybe that would do us humans and our eponymous humanity a world of good.”

- Chandra Bhattacharjee, Artist