February, 1996
"Sanjay Bhattacharya is one of the more gifted students of the realist
painter Bikash Bhattacharya. But realism as a genre of art has had to cope
with the invention of the camera, so artists committed to representing
the visual reality around them sought ways of blending inner and outer
realities or confronting the one against the other, as in Salvador Dali's
surrealist works.
In these works Sanjay has experimented with inner and outer realities evoked by architectural elements. The range is wide, from the bare behind to the family silver, and not every experiment is as successful. The most successful are subtle works like one portraying a bird seen through a broken wndow-pane, or a kite visible through an open doorways reminding one that reality can often be more startling and evocative than what we can imagine. And this message itself is worth the experiment."
The Sunday Times of India, August 21, 1994
Embers of Explosive Flowers
- Ratnottama Sengupta
The Obsrver of Business and Politics, Friday
March 12, 1993
An Artist with a Mature Vision
- Ajit Kumar Dutta
Swagat, February 1993
Translating Realism
- Uma Nair
The Telegraph, Monday 28 December 1992
"Two years ago Catherine Clement, wife of the then French ambassador,
took me to an exhibition of her paintings in Carma Gallery near the Qutab
Minar. Besides her works there were several watercolours of ancient temples
by the British high commissioner, Sir David Goodall, and an Indian, Sanjay
Bhattacharya, whose name I had never heard before. Each one of his paintings,
priced much higher than those of Clement and Goodall, bore the red dot
indicating that they had been sold. They all went on the very first day,
the caretaker informed me. I was not surprised because the paintings were
unlike any I had seen by young Indian artist.
There was nothing modern or incomprehensible about them; you did not have to guess whether it was a three-legged animal, a four-eyed female dragon; or whether it was hung the right way round. The themes were commonplace; a wooden staircase running up to the first floor, a woman cooking on an open choolha, a bicycle resting against a mud wall. Yet their vivid colours had an ethereal glow. They were realistic and suthentic. I could foresee that at any exhibition Sanjay Bhattacharya would be a sell out - no matter how, high he priced his pictures. I prayed he never turn an impressionist or inscrutable."
Sunday, 17-23 February 1991
"You have been there before, touched the same walls opened and shut
yonder door, someone old and dear to you once lay on this carved bed, worshipped
at that familiar shrine. Sanjay Bhattacharya's oils are surcharged with
a curious wuality of nostalgia.
...At 33, Sanjay Bhattacharya seems too young to have had a yesterday.
...Interiors are a recurrent motif of his art and an apt choice
for a painter with a striking ability to project depth and perspective.
His doorways open, like Persian puzzles, to many more and his staircases
reach for each other.
...Bhattacharya paints his subjects as they really are - and to
hell with the Impressionists."
Indian Express, Wednesday December 28, 1988
Sanjay's Fine Watercolours
- Santo Dutta
The Hindustan Times Weekly, New Delhi,
Sunday April 10, 1988
"In addition to the increasing popularity of landscape as a category
and water colour as a medium, we have artists like Sanjay Bhattacharya
with commendable mastery of both oils and water colour."
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