Paintings of Debjani Dakshit Dasgupta

Atanu Basu

Debjani, in conventional sense of the term, can hardly be called to have a solid "professional training", save and except possibly her three years' training in the Indian Society of Oriental Art. Next few years Debjani Dakshit Dasgupta had undergone serious apprenticeship under experts in the field. In south Kolkata's Charubason Gallery's Sunayani Chitrashala Hall she presented her artworks in a solo exhibition. For the last 20 years or so, she has been into paintings; in this latest exhibition, she showcased her 15 paintings for the delight of the viewers. Her Paintings were mostly in acrylic and also in mixed media. One can discern both graphics and quality in her paintings. Her skill in both paper and canvas is aptly documented through the exhibits in this hall.

In some of her paintings, she used only the middle portion of the space, surrounded by empty space, while in some others, she used the top-to-bottom approach, the composition appearing only at the bottom of the paper or canvas. She looked at from various angles her object of study, yet one would not be able to locate or pinpoint a typical approach revealing a feminist view through a woman's prism. One would rather encounter oneness, an inner expanse that characterises her paintings.

When one looks at it from an abstract or an esoteric viewpoint, art cannot be put into silos like "national" or "international". To do a proper justice to it, it should be called "materialistic" centered on nature. Human beings are intermingled and subsumed in nature itself, became a part of it; the artist must depict these features in her art lest her works become asocial. In Debjani's paintings, this nature-centricity became all pervasive. In the case of composition, not on every occasion, it may not reveal its inner core so easily. From the viewpoint of the grammar of composition, her stylisation, angle of vision, and other important aspects of components touched the chords of her viewers and sublimed the technicalities to appeal to one's aesthetic sense.

For landscapes, she uses sky, sometimes empty spaces at the top while huts and tenements appear horizontally, perhaps as a compensation in a very limited manner.

 The human figures in her paintings invariably remind one of Somnath Hore or Jainul Abedin. "Landscape I”, rendered in mix media, charcoal and brushing style was simply charming. “The night bloom” (from the album of “My Bagicha”) was not symbolised in any particular sense, yet it harbours an intense symbol in its own right. Here the combination of nature, moon and nightmares created an atmosphere of combustion feelings among the viewers. The absence of flowers generated a glimpse of flowers. Hidden in a subtle manner, generated a kind of detachment and also dissolution, which expressed the Nature in a different way.

 Her work, “Remains” in acrylic, dry pastel clearly conveys a message. In the backdrop of a pale sky, hillocks, in mystic darkness, one finds a skeleton lying in the valley region, though one is not sure whether the pace was a crematory or a burial ground. According to Debjani, “This is the last stage of life”. One has doubts whether the work would convey such a theme.

Wings were another of her themes. She used a pair of them, sometimes even a part of it. Wings or any parts thereof, with some compositional errors, might be thought-provoking. Did she depict a desire to fly high? The symbolic representations, in these cases, are too heavy. She did not put any limit, positive or otherwise, nor did she convey any specific, but a sublime pain was what the viewers would have to grapple with. This would invariably remind one of Somenath Hore’s “pain”.

Her work, “Trapped” is completely different. But one wonders, why, apparently quite suddenly, she had shunned realism and took recourse to a deflated eye socket. The sheer horror of it generates an eerie feeling.

In a strange exhibit, one sees a big chopper, in deep darkness depicting a story whose underlying theme appears to be the destruction of evils. She had presented her solo, lonely world in her own way, might be inspired by some personal language of art, which she questioned from time to time.

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Vol 57, No. 2, Jul 7 - 13, 2024