Sakti Burman, Indian (1935 - )

  Sakti Burman was born in Calcutta in 1935. He studied art in Calcutta and Paris. From the mid-50s, he has been living in Paris. However, he has been visiting and exhibiting in India quite regularly.

Sakti Burman's paintings weave myriad motfis culled from imagination and reality into a filigree of dreamscapes. With their soothing colors and rich textures these works combine the formal and stylstic values of Renaissance and Baroque art with native Indian myths and folklore. From the 1970s onwards Sakti's works display a greater formal clarity.

Burman is a fine lithographer who can achieve an incredible range of tonal and textural variations. He has illustrated several books such a collection of Mallarme's poems. He has also published portfolios of his lithographs.

Burman's images are steeped in romanticism and fantasy. Europe and India are fused in his imagination. Exotic birds and blooms sprout from unlikely places. Sensuously painted women loll about in a mythical or oneiric landscape. The surface is usually textured like aging frescos.