Sumitro Basak

Sumitro Basak (1975 – 2017) completed his BFA in 1997 and MFA in 1999 from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. The artist described his work as a “thin world created out of various shapes of varied colours and textures.” Sumitro Basak created an ambiguous world – they are either true ‘false’ realities or false ‘true’ realities. His forms are constructed, collaged out of materials which are in their actual use, meant for celebratory purpose. However, the world the artist created out of them are not about celebration – it is filled with shadows and like fragments of paper suggesting a relationship to a fragment of a memory.

Basak’s ‘people’ are amorphous forms, they change, and shift and activate spaces randomly. Much like children’s art which is, one suspects, the language Basak was inspired by. But his training in formal art, ladened his work with rationality and multiple layers of interpretation although apparently simple in expression. There is a tension between what is seen and unseen, a sense of a lurking presence. In many ways these unfilled areas complete or add to the spatial complexity; he creates this with minimal forms by making the empty spaces a part of the ‘picture’.