The artist’s French connection, Sakti Barman

He travelled across borders to seek out his destiny. Carrying in his kitty the story of Pandora’s Box that his mother had narrated to him when he was a child, and ‘hope’ and ‘curiosity’ as guiding forces for all his paintings, renowned artist from Kolkata Sakti Barman made many a voyage, traversing through life’s experiences with his artworks.

On the occasion of his 75th birthday, in association with The Serigraph Studio, Mumbai, an exhibition of his Limited Edition Serigraphs titled The Complete Collection will be presented at Gallery Sumukha from February 22 to March 10.

Born and raised in a traditional family of landed gentry in Bidyakut (now part of Bangladesh), Sakti Barman was hugely influenced by the joyous spirit of frequent festivities around him, which his paintings prominently exude. Destiny took him to Paris, where “his dream was fulfilled.” Barman says, “I came to Paris in 1956 and enrolled as a student at the Ecole Nationale Superiure des Beaux-Arts. I was keen to learn everything about the fascinating vista of the world of art that opened up for me in Paris.

” While painting, drawing and sketching, Barman regularly visited galleries and museums there to understand art history and the aesthetic drives of the modernism of Europe that had overhauled the concept of art. “I couldn’t forget my Indian roots and at the same time I was fascinated by Matisse and Bonnard, especially their interiors. I also picked up a little from Italian renaissance masters such as Masaccio, Giotto and Piero Della Francesca — their murals and frescos gave me an idea,” says Barman. But the Beaux Arts degree did not fetch him much remuneration, the artist recollects. His frequent visits to India resulted in his eyes opening to India’s glory: “I was reborn as an artist. I returned to Paris and did nothing but paint.”

Soon his art took a new turn as he forged the styles that he had gathered from the two worlds. “All my excited enjoyment of art in India and in the West that lay in the unconscious, all the myths, fairy tales, my love for music and Tagore’s songs and Baudelaire’s poetry — all went into the making of my paintings, guided heavily by spirituality,” says Barman.

This spiritual journey of the artist has been capsuled into 24 serigraphs for the exhibition. Lavesh Jagasia, a Mumbai-based art collector and art publisher of the Serigraph Studio, who has worked in close co-ordination with Sakti Barman for about six years for this exhibition, says, “The serigraphs are numbered, titled and signed by him.” Elaborating on the authenticity of the artist’s serigraphs, Jagasia says, “Each serigraph is accompanied by an individual ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ with details of size, image, title, paper size, paper quality, edition, year of release and a guarantee that no more serigraphs of the same image will be produced.”