amitava das

Born in 1947, Amitava Das studied drawing and painting at the College of Art, New Delhi. He was the founder member of a Delhi-based artists' group called "New Group". Which was formed in 1974.  Since his first solo exhibition in 1969, he has participated in several exhibitions in India and abroad. Das has co-curated a Contemporary Indian Art show titled ‘The Yellow Deity’ for the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Museum of Contemporary Art/Ludwig Museum, Budapest, Hungary. His more recent shows include, in 2004 Works on paper, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, in 2005 Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi and in 2007 Summer Show 2007, CIMA Gallery, Kolkata

From 1974-75 he has been a Lecturer at Art Institute, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and from 1975-77  he has been a Visiting Lecturer at the College of Art and Women’s Polytechnic, New Delhi.

 In the past Amitava has been inspired by the likes of Robert Delaunay and thus the predilection to tap out the inner rhythms of objects and their surrounding. Earlier Amitava had given himself up to depict the violence and avarice of modern times, now he retreats to a more introspective mode of expression, to quote Delaunay's 1912 letter to Wassily Kandinsky.

 "The way I want to identify myself and others is with halos here and halos there, movements of colour. And that, I believe, is rhythm. Seeing is in itself a movement. Vision is the true creative rhythm. Discerning the quality of rhythms is a movement, and the essential quality of painting is representing the movement of vision which functions in objectivizing itself toward reality. That is the essential of art, and its greatest profoundness."— a text that holds relevance for Amitava even in today's post-modern scenario.     

 In Amitava`s art, we see the collapse of the traditional aesthetics of beauty and equilibrium. His is the raw energy at work that refines itself through its own gestural acts. He allows no preconceived plan or theme to guide his actions, which often arise from subconscious levels of sentience, allowing plastic signs and signals to emerge through incident.

Besides line and colour Amitava pays special attention to the surface that is bejeweled with patches of impasto paint, brush-swirl textures and raised bumps that punctuate coloured bands of varying width…in some instances Amitava creates yet another layer between the colours and the viewer's eye by cloaking the coloured bands with a fine lace-work of opaque white dots. It may seem as if the artist has squeezed the paint direct onto the canvas.

Amitava Das lives and works in Delhi.