CHANDRA BHATTACHARJEE

Chandra Bhattacharjee was born in 1960. He graduated from the Indian College of Art and Draughtsmanship with a first class in 1986. He received a gold medal from Rabindra Bharati University in 1986 for excellence in fine arts. He received the Taj Gaurav award in 2008. He was honoured by the President of India in 2019 as an artist-in-residence in Rashtrapati Bhavan. He had started his career as a billboard artist.  He has held 17 solo shows so far with Galerie 88, Kolkata; The Gallery in Cork Street, London, in collaboration with Threshold Art; Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi; Sumukha Art Gallery, Bangalore; Gallery Beyond, Mumbai; Art Heritage, New Delhi; Gallery Veda, Chennai. His works have been part of auctions held by Art for Humanity, Art Chennai, Emami Chisel, Bonhams, Apparaoart and Saffronart. He has been a part of numerous national and international art workshops, art fairs, and curated group expositions. He was the inaugural resident artist at Studio Arnawaz in Cholamandal Artists Village, Chennai. His latest group participations include Art Now, Art Alive, Delhi; In Proximity, Gandhara Art Gallery, Kolkata; Black Hole Project, AM, Kolkata; Body, Shanghamugham Art Museum, Kochi; Reclaiming Gandhi, Museum of Goa and 100 Years of Champaran, Bihar Museum.  He is a regular at the India Art Fair and has participated in Art Chennai and Art Singapore; A few among his group shows are Art Now, Art Alive; Divergent Horizons, Lalit Kala, Chennai; Lost in Transition, Harrington, Kolkata; The Mahatma, and When High and Low art meet, Art Alive, curated by Rupika Chawla; Art Celebrates 2010, New Delhi; Cross currents, curated by Sushma Bahl; 10X10, Threshold; Snow, curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Palette Art Gallery; Life is a Stage, ICIA, Mumbai; Gaze Within, Gaze Without, Gandhara Art Gallery, Kolkata; 20 Years of Indian Contemporary Art, Gallery Muller & Plate, Munich; Just One, Artco Galerie, Germany; Indien Garten der Kunste, Aalen, Artco Galerie, Germany; Adana Biennale, Turkey; Imprints, The Ueno Royal Museum, Tokyo; Diverse Idioms, Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre; Power of Peace, Bali, The United Nations; XI Indian Triennale India; Ways of Seeing, Art Alive, Delhi; Indian Contemporaray Art, Sumukha-Quayside Gallery, London; Nude Studies, The Guild. His works are in the public collections of the Museum of Bengal Modern Art, Arts Acre Foundation, Kolkata; Jordan National Gallery of Fine Art; Govt Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh. Chandra’s works are imbued with his environment, the changes, his emotion, his response. Discomfiting undercurrents belie the apparent calmness of his canvas. His medium is entirely visual, his language eloquently unspoken. Being a figurative painter, his subject is usually the human being. Through a facial expression or a position, he seeks to interact with them and enter their tissue, stripped of the persona. At times he gets uncomfortably close to his subject, creating a physical tension for the viewer. Many of his works engage with deception in everyday life. ‘We think we are making independent choices but even our most basic decisions are a consequence of our conditioning. It is a charade of freedom,’ says Chandra. He lives and works in Kolkata.

Read more