Sanjay Bhattacharya’s love-hate relationship with watercolor is worth documenting- at one point of time this well-known young contemporary Bengali artist, almost decided to give up on painting with watercolor, because, he felt he was not adequate enough to handle it, "it was a very difficult medium to handle" he says. However he decided to give it one last shot, taking it up as a challenge but dealing with love. And the products are there for everyone to see-his watercolors are today one of the most sought after possessions for any Indian Art Connoisseur.
Sanjay Bhattacharya was born in 1958 did a diploma in Fine Arts from the Government College of Arts & Crafts, Calcutta in 1982, he has held numerous exhibition of his work in India and abroad.
Paintings that Sing
Sanjay Bhattacharya’s watercolors and oils explore the beauty of the intimacy between nature and human existence and does so almost musically. For Bhattacharya says that his paintings are an attempt at the translation of his tunes into the visual medium. After all, he has lived in the music-enveloped ambience of Santiniketan for quite some time where he grew listening to the Rabindra Sangeet.
Sanjay Bhattacharya’s themes
Bhattacharya mostly depicts sights and sounds of Calcutta in the most unobtrusive manner. He draws from the works of different masters like Dali and Rembrandt. He chooses the themes of his painting trying his best to bring out the indelible impact they had on his psyche. "Dali had a strange habit of collecting strange things as fish skeleton, screw, etc. These articles, especially nuts and bolts, always fly in the sky in his works. I have kept it like that in my works too. Dali once lifted his moustache and with the help of glue made it reach his eyeball. I have used this image from the cover of a book. I have divided my canvas diagonally for the first time and used a lot of black-brown hues. Since Dali's canvases used to be very light and Rembrandt's dark, I kept the upper part for Dali and the lower for Rembrandt," says Sanjay.
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