The time traveller's life

The artist Sakti Burman has often been described, and rightly so, as a bridge between the East and the West. Born in 1935 and educated in Kolkata, Burman left for Paris to study at the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts. Since then, he has been living and practising in France, while keeping his ties to India. His paintings, which use the technique of marbling, resemble frescoes, such as those in Pompeii and Ajanta, and are indicative of the dual worlds he occupies.

This side to Burman, says cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote, is one that the artist has been strongly identified with. His marbled paintings, says Hoskote, represent just one experiment among many. The lesser-known side to Burman, such as his contribution to textile design and book illustrations, his landscapes and lithographs, will be brought to the fore along with his famous paintings in an ambitious retrospective, the first for the artist in Mumbai.

Titled In the Presence of Another Sky: Sakti Burman, a retrospective, the exhibition is curated by Hoskote. "Burman's art weaves together a complex web. If one line of descent links Burman to the mural and the fresco tradition, another links him to the School of Paris, and yet another to Rabindra-sangeet, kantha embroidery and Kalighat gouaches," says Hoskote, who has earlier collaborated with the artist on a book of poems and images titled, What's He Going to Be Next?

The exhibition, which is supported by gallery Art Musings and the Ministry of Culture, opens at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on October 17. It is sectioned into eight chapters with over 250 works and a wide selection of sketchbooks and objects collected by Burman. The exhibition is a thematic one, rather than chronological, and spans nearly 70 years of the artist's oeuvre.
Here, visitors will be able to see André Gide's French translation of Tagore's Gitanjali, which Burman was invited to illustrate.

Burman's textile designs for the Parisian fashion studio, Lizzie Derriey Dessin, will also be on view. In the section titled 'The Studio Without Walls', Hoskote has presented the artist as collector. There are references to Jain miniatures, Kalighat paintings and dokra artefacts, among other things, that Burman collected over the years. "These are talismanic objects that we surround ourselves with. In Burman's case, these objects come into his work as well," says the curator.

The exhibition also pays homage to the figures that Burman's works are often associated with, such as the harlequin. These figures and the use of myth render a dreamlike quality to his works. But, that doesn't mean that Burman is disconnected from socio-political realities.

Hoskote draws attention to Burman's childhood memories of Bengal in pre-Independence India. The forced migration across borders during the Partition is an event that would have earned Burman's sympathy. In a book that will be released towards the end of the exhibition, Hoskote writes, "And it is not impossible to read, occasionally, a more directly political inflection in Burman's work. I would interpret one of his recurrent images, a wondrous composite of Noah's Ark and Manu's ship, laden with a magical cargo of survivors -- jongleurs, artisans, demigods and mysterious animals that have survived the cosmic flood -- as a vibrant riposte to the persistent rhetoric of Europe's conservatives."

Hoskote retraces the vast travels of Burman, along with his wife Maite Delteil, who he met while studying in Paris. Burman didn't just journey across countries, but also through time, drawing from Henri Matisse as much as Egyptian Pharaonic art, becoming a time-traveller of sorts, delving deep into the art traditions of each culture. "Sakti is the kind of artist who sets the example of the cosmopolitan, embracing multiple cultures with a generosity and curiosity to their expressions. As an Indian contemporary and a global contemporary, he stands out in these parochial times," says Hoskote.

Where: National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Kala Ghoda
When: October 18 - November 26
Call: 22881969