Important Notice

Though individually, each motif that Sakti Burman employs in his figurative canvases may seem familiar, the realities that they come together to create are anything but recognizable. Frequently referred to as an 'alchemist of dreams', the images on Burman's complex, otherworldly canvases are condensed through both experience and fantasy. Although the artist left India for France in his early twenties, and has lived there since, he continues to... Though individually, each motif that Sakti Burman employs in his figurative canvases may seem familiar, the realities that they come together to create are anything but recognizable. Frequently referred to as an 'alchemist of dreams', the images on Burman's complex, otherworldly canvases are condensed through both experience and fantasy. Although the artist left India for France in his early twenties, and has lived there since, he continues to strongly believe that, even today, the memories of his early years in India shape his paintings to a great extent.

Burman's multicoloured worlds bring together memories from the artist's childhood with more recent experiences, including a second childhood he lives vicariously through his grandson Ganapathy. This iridescent canvas from 2002 shows several children and adults at play in a wondrous garden, where the world will always be joyous, for them as well as for the artist. Alongside these figures are other mythic ones, including a youthful Lord Shiva and his consort riding on their bull, Nandi, and a multi-armed and faced woman perched on the back of a large bird. Titled 'Memory of the Time', this painting links an ordinary playground of swings and slides, with an extraordinary one, where gods and humans interact, and where children can befriend and ride on mythic birds and beasts.

"Each of Sakti's canvases looks as finished as a meticulous filigree work. He creates a chequered chromatic surface of visual splendour by means of a dense network of varied tones and textures charged in every detail with strong but disciplined aesthetic stimulation" (Manasij Majumder, Sakti Burman: Dreamer on the Ark, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2001, p. 10). This unique marbling effect that Burman achieves in works like the present lot is the result of an elaborate and meticulous process. Ella Dutta explains, "First, he applies a liquidified, clear, acrylic emulsion on the canvas. And then he adds drops of oil paint mixed with the emulsion on the canvas. He uses a fine brush for this delicate application of paint. The special effect he achieves is the result of the distortion and spread of the drop on one kind of paint as it tends to separate from the emulsion" ("A Poetic Vision", Sakti Burman: Uncertain Legends, Apparao Galleries exhibition catalogue, 1999. p. 8).

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