Last update:November 10, 2024, 12:00 PM IST

Almost 30 years after his death in a car crash in 1995, the exhibition offers a chance to restore his legacy

The exhibition ends on Sunday, November 10. (Photo credits: Instagram)

The national capital hosts an exhibition celebrating the legacy of abstractionist Bimal Das Gupta. The work, ‘Bimal Das Gupta: Tutelage – An Ode to a Legend’, presents a series of art by an abstractionist master spanning six decades of his creative career. The two-day exhibition, organized by Dhoomimal Gallery and Gallery Silver Scapes, is currently on. held at Travancore House in New Delhi, showcases Das Gupta’s daring experiments with acrylics and watercolours, as well as a variety of other untried mediums and their combinations, including gouaches and oil pastels, which he adopted after becoming allergic to oil paints.

The exhibition ends on Sunday, November 10.

What was Bimal Das Gupta?

Das Gupta was born in Bengal in 1917 and gained fame as a landscape painter. Following his European tour, he experimented with Cubism and ventured into Neo-Tantrism, which marked the beginning of his abstract phase. Eventually, he moved on to pure abstraction, which he painted with acrylics and watercolors. He has managed mural projects for India’s pavilions at the Tokyo and Moscow International Exhibitions, besides having numerous exhibitions both domestically and abroad.

In 1972, the Sahitya Kala Parishad recognized Das Gupta, and in 1989, he was elected a member of the Lalit Kala Akademi.

Almost 30 years after his untimely death in a car accident in 1995, which caused his art to become somewhat obscure, the exhibition offers a chance to restore his legacy, demonstrating the breadth of his creative breakthroughs and impact.

As one of the nation’s first and most influential abstractionists, the exhibition charts his evolution from the 1930s, when he initially deviated from the figurative styles prevalent in post-independence India to the final years of his career.

“Due to his and his children’s untimely deaths in the same accident, his works have been somewhat lost for many years. However, in recent years, his works have started appearing regularly at auctions and have done quite well,” Dhoomimal gallery director Uday Jain said in a statement.

“I am very happy that we at Dhoomimal and Silver Scapes Gallery have come together to pay a fitting tribute to one of India’s greatest artists in an exhibition curated by Archana Khare-Ghose,” he added.