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Lot Details

Signed 'Sakti Burman' (lower centre right)
Further signed, titled, dated and inscribed 'Sakti Burman / "Universal Mother" / 2016 / 92 x 73 cm (on the reverse)

PROVENANCE
Acquired directly from the artist.

Sakti Burman’s art celebrates spirituality in every way. Influenced by different cultures, Burman presents a confluence of diverse histories, with an intention to transcend boundaries and emphasize on spiritual and human oneness of all systems. Universal Mother holds a symbolic significance. While this painting evokes a sense of peace and joy, it signifies the artist's conscious and repeated effort to bring together two different spiritual themes. And in doing so, he celebrates this religious integration. Mother Mary cradling baby Ganesha in a mother's grasp, at once, depicts the essence of motherhood and divinity - two expressions that are universal across time and geography. The coming together of two pivotal religious icons of the west and east in this union of mother and child, underscores the catholicity of these themes.

Speaking about the artist’s work, Rosa Maria Falvo states, "Borrowing frequently from Hindu and European mythology, Sakti Burman manipulates as much as the visual space allows, creating an interiorised atmosphere…Drawing on his cultural affiliations with Bengal and a convivial appreciation for people, Burman orchestrates a charming interplay between imagination and experience. The artist’s visual language fuses his storytellers with the metaphysical modalities of history. Its seduction lies in its originality of perspective. However symbolic or figurative, he is utterly personal. And his figures appear as independent entities...His culturally kaleidoscopic approach - quite literally inspired by its Greek etymology (‘observing beautiful forms’) - is afforded by the fact that he migrated to France as a young man and was adopted through study and marriage into a foreign culture. So his work tumbles the viewer into a series of multiple and hybrid experiences. Like a palimpsest, Burman’s choice of content, often reliant on daydreams or memories, is erased, re-written, and superimposed on ancient motifs and the promise of fresh ideas. This kind of augmented reality, melding and layering people and places, makes for his unique style of representation. And is is not by chance that his artistic curiosity lured him through the wonders of classicism, the Medieval, the Renaissance, and Modernism, with frequent visits to Italy early in his career." (B.N. Goswamy and Rosa Maria Falvo, Sakti Burman: A Private Universe, Skira, Milan, 2014, pg. 11 & 12)

Sakti Burman

(b. 1935)
Born in Kolkata, Sakti Burman graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, in 1956 and then went on to study at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, where, in 1956, he won the Prix des Etrangers. Some of the most recent solo shows of his work include a retrospective at the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata and Maison de I’Unesco, in 2008. Burman’s works have also been featured at various other international gallery exhibitions; including at the Rand Palais, Paris, in 1975 and 1994; and at the French Biennales in 1963, 1965 and 1967. The artist lives and works in Paris.