Educated at the Government School of Art & Craft, Calcutta, Sakti Burman (b.1935) is today a well-known Paris-based painter of Indian origin. He acknowledges that his experiences as a young painter in France and his travels to Italy and exposure to its Renaissance fresco paintings influenced his evolution. Described as an ‘Alchemist of Dreams’, Burman skilfully blends the Italian fresco tradition and the classical Ajanta (Buddhist) cave murals in India to create a world where fantasy, fable and poetry coalesce and flowers, trees, birds and imaginary anthropomorphic creatures co-exist in perfect harmony.