"To prevent myself from producing the same kind of work, I keep altering my
vision. From the day people begun to see me as a painter, a huge
responsibility fell upon me, particularly to respond to the feelings of the
people at the grassroots level who are also my viewer, as also to delve deep
into realties of life around me."
One of India's important post-modernist painters, Sunil Das rose to
prominence with his drawing of horses. "I must have done 7000 horses between
1950 to 60," he says. "In 1962, I went to Spain, where I was fascinated by
the bull fights."
About 60 years of age, he can look back at his nine to ten phases of
paintings, all of them marked by supreme skill and a sense of integrity. An
indefatigable painter, Das jumped from one style to another easily.
Talking about his art style, he says, "To express my authentic feelings
about reality, I have to interpret it, I have conceptualise it. The previous
reality gets transformed in the laboratory of minds. Then, I bring it out on
the canvas."
Das came from a middle class family and his father was just a small
businessman. After completing school, he decided to become a painter and
joined a local art school. "I am a good sports man," he says. "I like things
which have a lot of rhythm and energy."
He doesn't ever use photographs or models for his painting. "I do a sketch
before I start painting. I always struggle with colours and shapes, until
they fall to desired pattern. Like a music conductor, I summon all my music
instruments to play and orchestrate an aesthetic unit out of various
experiences." He does not confine himself to using brush or pen while
painting, and often paints with the palms of his hands or with his fingers.
A French art scholarship with the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts
took him to Europe. It was in the course of his travels that he chanced to
spend a few months in Spain, where he developed his passion for horses and
bulls. Das' paintings have also been influenced by his study of sculpture at
Santiniketan, Kolkata, and his study of graphic art in Paris. His paintings
have a kind of structure and rigidity that one would typically find in
sculpture and in the etchings of graphic art.
Das's paintings not only express the physical attributes of his subjects but
also their associative ones. Every once in a while he paints human beings,
but his depiction of the human anatomy is skewed, to a point that it almost
borders on macabre surrealism. For example, his series on women with
mysterious, tantalising eyes - all oil on canvas, the portraits convey, in
various forms including the erotic, the pressures women are subject to.
Hardly ever painting in loud or warm colors, Das uses soft brown, mauve and
white in the background to bring out the drama of life. He blends talent
with hard work. He works by suggestion and minimalism. Quite absurd in form,
his paintings are morbidly fascinating. "I delve a lot on man's inhumanity
to man," he says.
Das has the distinction of being the only Indian artist to have won a
National Award (the Shiromani Kala Puraskar) while still an undergraduate at
the Government College of Art and Craft, kolkata. Besides having been
featured in several exhibitions, his works are also a part of the
collections of renowned museums such as the National Gallery of Modern Art,
New Delhi, the Glenbarra Art Museum, Japan, and the Ludwig Museum, Germany.