Profile   |    Summary "The colours in my paintings are mostly intuitive. Sometimes I have to work to harmonise them, other times they just flow. At that point, colour seems to communicate. They become larger than life. That, I think, is the secret of my painting. I am not concerned with success and recognition. All I want to do is to paint. I will live till I realise I can paint. After that, living is unnecessary." Manas Biswas’s most famous... Read More "The colours in my paintings are mostly intuitive. Sometimes I have to work to harmonise them, other times they just flow. At that point, colour seems to communicate. They become larger than life. That, I think, is the secret of my painting. I am not concerned with success and recognition. All I want to do is to paint. I will live till I realise I can paint. After that, living is unnecessary." Manas Biswas’s most famous paintings are the ones he did after the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya, as a fallout of the mad and mindless violence that swept India.He painted one overloaded frame after another with tightly hemmed-in, meshed colour segments, each rubbing against the other in the claustrophobic space of the canvas. His post-Ayodhya riot series also had mixed-media works, in which crushed and twisted acrylic sheets and fibre glass-structures were stuck on the canvas and splattered with colours that told their own grotesque tales of blood and violence. Biswas calls himself an abstractionist, a painter who aspires to "create free-flowing expressionism" in his work. He says, "The riots that erupted in Mumbai in 1993 left an indelible impression my mind. I wanted to do something about it. I don’t have any clout in the corridors of power. So I thought of doing the next best thing. To use my art to express my anguish." Biswas is a graduate in sculpture from Calcutta’s Indian Art College and came to Mumbai in 1984. He is one of the most powerful young painters. In 1993, he held his solo exhibition at the Sophiya Duchesne Art Gallery, Mumbai. Most of Biswas’s works almost looks like jigsaw puzzle. "If you see my painting ‘Face’ you will realise that it is painted like a puzzle, especially because of its composition and form." Biswas insists that he is an artist who paints by gut instinct and intellectualism doesn’t touch his works. He has held about 19 shows in his eight-year career span. Biswas does not conform to any school of art or thought. As he says, "There is nothing much about it to study. Once the basic grammar and the technicalities have been learnt, it’s a question of how much of himself an artist puts in his work. The painting should be researched from within." He works in watercolour, ink and charcoal. Manas K Biswas lives and works in Mumbai. Read Less Born January 19, 1961    Read More Read Less Read Less
To be notified when works come up for sale on Saffronart: Please enter a valid email address. Thank you. You have been subscribed. Subscribing...

Need help? For more information on Indian Art, please see our Art Guide. For help with buying through Saffronart please click here. If you have any other questions, please contact us.