Strokes from the Past

If an artwork is representative of the era it was conceived in,then Sunirmal Chatterjees paintings showcase tales from the 1950s.

Sunirmal Chatterjees artwork travels through a green,serene India

If an artwork is representative of the era it was conceived in,then Sunirmal Chatterjees paintings showcase tales from the 1950s. His work takes you through India including Nainital,Himachal Pradesh and Goa as it was back then,green,serene and sans traffic. The works range from sketches inspired by sculptures at Khajuraho to portraits of natives in their traditional attire and sketches of gardens and living rooms within homes,depicting the lifestyle of the people back then.

The artist is no longer with us,but he continues to inspire us, says Dr DS Kapoor,curator of the exhibition titled Retrospective of Sunirmal Chatterjee. The principal of Government College of Arts takes us through 180 works of the artist who taught at Government College of Arts and the Chandigarh College of Architecture. He also received the lifetime achievement award from Lalit Kala Akademi in 1999. He was affectionately known as dada and was always ready to paint, recalls professor Rajnish Wattas,former principal of Chandigarh College of Architecture.

The mediums range from watercolours to paper-cuts,sketches,digital prints,collages,photographs,graphic prints and sculptures. His work is suffused with restless energy and harnessed by eternal peace, says Kapoor,pointing out that Chatterjee experimented with watercolours on a special handmade paper that was brought especially from Nepal.

Next in the pipeline is an initiative titled Art Join Hearts,where college authorities want to engage in a dialogue with artists from Lahore. We are inviting artisans from Mayo School of Arts,Lahore,in November, says Kapoor.

The exhibition at Government College of Arts is on till September 10.

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