Style : Amitabh Sengupta’s works TIME is depicted in various metaphors. As in the remains of rock-cut shrines or shelters, the Haveli door, the walls or a seascape, they all carry the mark of TIME – the texture of sun and wind, rain and corrosion and so on. Objects of past, and the objects of now, all stand within the frame of present. The meaning of past and present seemed to have merged in a zone of real existence – within the space and time of the artist’s experience. Again as metaphor of time, the element of myth enters in Amitabh’s works as often, as if to merge past into the present.
Amitabh uses oil in a modernists’ way of classical manner, layers after layer, and often using the effect of the under layer. The major environment he likes to create on the canvases has an imposing feeling of reality that invariably merged into an unreal zone. The unknown elements are vital as they take real objects into a sense of continuity and motion.
About the Artist and his work :
Born : 1941.
Education :
1963 Graduated in Painting from Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata
1966 – 1968 Received French Government Scholarship in Printmaking and Painting, studied at Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris
Ed.M in the State University of New York at Buffalo under AICE-UNESCO
1976 – 1987 Worked in Nigeria as the Head of Visual Arts in two universities
1979 – 1981 Fellowship on General Education & Educational Policy Analysis
Exhibitions :
1988 Graphic show 4 Artist Gallerie, Calcutta
1990 Gallery Katayun, Calcutta,
Jehangir Art Gallery Bombay
Sarala’s Art International – Madras
1991 Art heritage New Delhi
1992 & 93 Sarala’s Art Centre, Madras
1994 Pao Galleries- Hongkong Art Centre, Hongkong
Sarala’s Art International 2005 – Artworld
Solo Exhibitions :
1968 Galeie des Beaux-Arts, Paris Cite International de Paris Salon d’Automne, Paris
1974 Black Partridge Gallery, New Delhi
1975 Black Partridge Gallery, New Delhi
1979 Owerri, Nigeria
1986 Port Harcourt, Nigeria
1988 “Interiors” at The Gallery, Chennai
1989 “Walls” at the Galerie 88, Kolkata
1990 “Interiors” at the Gallery Katayun, Kolkata
1991 “Interiors” at the Art Heritage, New Delhi
1992 “Split Wall” at the Center Art Gallery, Kolkata
1993 “Surface of Time” at Sarala’s Art Centre, Chennai and the Art Heritage, New Delhi
1995 “Surface of Time” at Crimson Gallery, Bangalore
1996 Jehangir Art Gallery, Chennai
1997 Paintings and computer Graphics, ArtWorld Gallery, Chennai
1999 Paintings and Computer Graphics, Birla Academy, Kolkata
2000 ArtWorld Gallery, Chennai
Awards :
1961 Received All India Award in painting, Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata
1975 Received President’s Award in painting, All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society, New Delhi
1986 – 1987 Listed as Art advisor with the Federal Universities, Nigeria and with the UNESCO, Paris.
