For gallery Aurobindo this season, Sanjay Bhattacharya is a new find. His watercolours are now on view at the gallery in Hauz Khas. Besides eight watercolours sketches of different deities in terracotta reliefs, 19 watercolours of Calcutta street scenes and other views have been mounted.
His total involvement in the Calcutta cityscape and his technical mastery over the medium reminds us of Shyamal Datta Roy who belongs to the same city and is one of the best watercolour artist in India. While Shyamal Datta Roy's watercolours always transcend the mirror-image of the scenes and life around and assume a disquieting dimension of irony and criticism of human situation. Sanjay, the young watercolourist, has the 17th century Spanish obsession with the mirror-image of reality, that of the trivia of everyday life, and he has eminently succeeded. ...these remind us of the grand vision of the celebrated photo-artist Ansel Adams. Sanjay could have given us more landscapes.
This is not a riverine romantic scene, this is Calcutta, which comes again and again in his other works - Calcutta decaying, Calcutta the city of the dilapidated palaces of the 19th century rich, Calcutta of the faded British grandeur.
...The white cock nibbling near a dustbin on a dry paving stone in "On the Pavement", made me find the 17th century Spanish parallel to his paintings.
...Atget's early photographs of Paris showed such blind alleys and damp stains on walls, and so did the cne camera of Mrinal Sen.
The viewer should not miss "The Queen", "The Door Ajar" and the "Red Steps".
- Santo Datta
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