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Most of Shakti Burman's paintings carry a self
image of the painter himself; a face devoid of any moustache but
covered with beard. It is a carefully adopted style statement of the
artist which makes him distinctly different from others. Style is
today an integral part of the art world. Artists like
Paresh Maity (with a beret cap, glasses and
beard), Sunil Das (with a burning
cigarette during photo-shoots) and
Devajyoti
Ray
(always with a golf cap), realize the importance of specific style
statements in an increasingly effusive world.
But this was not so always. Most artists of
earlier eras could be divided plainly into two categories:
'clean-shaven' and 'not shaven'. Contrary to popular belief artists
of the former group had always been numerically preponderous. Some
of the clean shaven great artists of Bengal had been
Abanindranath Tagore, Sailoz Mukherjee,
Abani Sen, Gopal Ghosh,
Paritosh Bhattacharya,
Zainul Abedin,
Ramkinkar Baiz (when he was sober),
Bikash Bhattacharya,
Ganesh Paine,
Sunil Das
, etc. If one would like to add the women artists
then this group is likely to become even larger.
Compared to the above group, the not-shaven
artists had always been lesser in number. some of them includes
Rabindranath Tagore,
Prokash Karmakar
and
Shuvaprasanna.
The group of artists with only moustaches had
been the smallest. among the modern greats it includes only
Jogen Choudhuri
.
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Shakti Burman,
father of Maya Burman, uncle of Jayashree Burman and related
to Paresh Maiti was born in 1935. In
terms of age, he is a contemporary of other Bengal masters of
our age Bikash Bhattacharya and
Ganesh Paine. Yet Burman had never
been a part of the Calcutta’s art movement and rather
developed his style away from the influence of all; in
Paris.
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After a long stay in Europe, Burman returned to India to take on Indian
subjects with his European learning. But he was not initially much
appreciated by the Indian Art lovers. He was rather more popular in
Europe. It is in only recent past that Burman’s paintings received
acclaim in India.
Burman’s works are a kind of mixture of the
Indian past
, of
his European learning mixed with a good dose of his own life.
He draws his subjects, metaphors, etc all from the cave
paintings, the great monuments, etc which serve as the
historical reference in his paintings. To give his works a
look of old un-restored frescoes, he uses a very special
technique, the result of which is that his works look more
like large detailed tapestries.
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Typical Shakti Burman
paintings like the one in the left shows emporer Akbar juxtaposed
against the Taj Mahal with paintings of nude women from European
masterpieces. On right another of his work with own self -portrait |
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Medium and Techniques of Work
Burman’s works are mostly in
oil and
mixed media
with oil as the basic medium. The
paintings show two dimensional features painted in detail that looks
like tapestry.
Major Themes
Burman’s own self image, images of people he has known and
people from history books all come together in Burman’s
paintings against the backdrop of historical monuments and
mythical figures.
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