Cultural delights of Bengal on canvas

Bold use of colour and strokes of vibrant hues are the rage at the painting exhibition ‘Vibration of Colour’ currently underway at the Pegasus Art Gallery in Jubilee Hills.

Four contemporary artists from Bengal Asish Gupta, Manik Chandra Kundas, Arunesh Chouwdhary and Bibhas Baidya are exhibiting their works. A total of 28 paintings are on display until Saturday.

Manik Chandra comments about his works. According to the artist, his paintings take one into the dream land of light and shadows in human relationship.

“My works are mainly figurative dealing with one or more figures. Human figure is an accumulation of beauty and I want to express a part of it, in this female figure,” he shares.

“I used high contrastable light and shade in my figures to maintain a compact of volume. There is an interesting use of texturisation and shadows in the paintings. The palette tends towards red, blue, green and yellow tinged with more intense colors while each strokes contributes to a complex pictorial organisation,” he adds.

On the other hand Asish Gupta delves into the primordial life of the tribes in daily action. “My recent works are based on folk art mainly from Bengal.

The theme is traditional folk paintings. I used textures like acrylic on canvas and used mixmedium colours. The greenery and the village life give a kind of happiness which is not found in city life. My theme is ‘social life style of village’,” he shares.

Bibhas’ works have a stronger expression than others. Says Bibhas, “My work is based on horses that neigh out in anguish and anger. I am working on contemporary modern arts and acrylic on canvas.

My painting depicts animals like cow and horse. I named my art as Humbleness of animals.” Giving a modern treatment to contemporary idioms through his characters, who are mainly women, Arunesh Chowdhary says,

“I have been experimenting on the cubic forms dividing my canvas with geographic forms with black strong border lines. At first I apply base colour on the surface and use bicolour for shading that provides two dimensional effects.

Then, it spreads all over the canvas with variation for texture.” “That’s why my works are bright and attractive and the work is based on Bengali livelihood of women,” he adds.