Indian war history on muslin

The Krishnakriti Art Festival’s 14th edition started with the art exhibition ‘Hahakar’ – The Agony paintings by artist Sumantra Sengupta, at Alliance Francaise.

The works are done in muslin and represent India’s role in the First World War. Dr Samuel Berthet, curated the show ‘Hahakar’. He said, “The First World War remains widely perceived in Britain as a European conflict with European consequences.

However, the involvement of India then still a part of the British Empire is ignored. So, Sumantra has raised the wide range of issues through his artworks. When I discussed the project with him, the idea was to reach the younger generation about the history and the World War.”

He said, “When I discussed the project; Sumantra Sengupta was surprised and he said it is challenging.

Then we started developing the series of Indian World War One, so we started working on it quickly and came up with the idea of muslin as the symbol of the Indian craft which attracted the traders from all over the India. The muslin was chosen to use in artworks by Sumantra.”

Speaking about the works of the artist, Samuel says “Every painting shows some different meaning of the Indian soldier who is sending the news in a form of letter to their families; we went deeply into the Indian history of World War One.

Sumantra is a powerful artist. The recent creation of his pretty creative and unique.”
“The idea was to explore and express strong emotions in the work.

The type of medium he used is muslin, acrylic colours, mix medium, and also taken the actual photos of the war. You can see the combination of photos and paintings is extremely blended in her artwork,” he added.

What: ‘Hahakar’ – The Agony paintings by artist Sumantra Sengupta
Where: Alliance Francaise
When: Un till January 20 from
10 am to 6 pm