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Lot 76

 

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Sakti Burman's paintings often evoke a surrealist feel, referencing multiplicities of time and place. The present lot was painted in 1961, five years after he had moved to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1958, Burman travelled to Italy, and his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto, Piero de la Francesca and Simone Martini inspired him to assimilate their monumentality and textures in his works. In the... Sakti Burman's paintings often evoke a surrealist feel, referencing multiplicities of time and place. The present lot was painted in 1961, five years after he had moved to Paris and enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Suprieure des Beaux-Arts. In 1958, Burman travelled to Italy, and his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto, Piero de la Francesca and Simone Martini inspired him to assimilate their monumentality and textures in his works. In the present lot, Burman depicts a colourful circus scene with acrobats in mid-action. The overall dream-like effect and the pointillist, marbling technique that would become characteristic of his mature style, have begun to appear even in this relatively early work. Critic Kishore Singh suggests that Burman's marbling technique was serendipitous, observing that "instead of just painting over [the painting] once it had dried, he continued to experiment, and liked... the colouration this resulted in, an ode to a passing age and a sense of gentle ageing that suited his sensibilities. The mural-like effect appeared first within the figures; it would later become part of the background as well." (B N Goswamy, Kishore Singh, Mrinal Ghosh eds., Sakti Burman: The Wonder of It All, Mumbai: Pundole Art Gallery and Apparao Galleries, 2012, p. 49)

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