Chittravanu Majumdar is one of the most important painters of contemporary India. His paintings use a language of abstraction which manage to reach out to the most uninitiated of viewers because they express our contemporary reality.
He studied art in Government College of Arts and Crafts Calcutta, and graduated in 1981.
Majumdar show in Calcutta in 1985 was a critical success. Since then he has been working in both Calcutta and France. His brush with France is evident in his paintings, which draw from many western schools. Majumdar has also designed a number of books and magazine covers for Seagull Books and has illustrated several of their books.
Majumdar mostly works in oils and acrylics .He is well known for his large canvases and fragmented, semi-abstract forms.
Chittravanu Majumdar Paintings
Majumdar's paintings are characterized by harsh brushstrokes and saturated colors. As stated earlier he mostly deals with abstract forms but of late he has been turning experimenting with figurative works. The Hindu goddess Kali is one of the most recurrent figures of his paintings. His fascination with the goddess of time can be attributed to his father’s obsession with figures of mother goddesses but Majumdar senior's treatment and palette were entirely different from Chittravanus. Majumdar is also well known for using material other than paint on the canvas. Old wood blocks, patterned fabrics, even paper create a collage like effect.
Chittravanu Majumdar’s Themes
Chittravanu's paintings mostly reflect his experience of reality. Like the' magical realism' of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Majumdars reality is a result of his engagement with the social matrix wherein different realities merge into one. He chooses to focus on multitude of images, each with its own logic and inherent unity, its own viability, very much like the layered existence of the urban individual. Some images may seem incongruous and juxtaposed but they truly echo the urban cityscape
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