Sanjay Bhattacharya

Sanjay Bhattacharya, school was the most boring thing on earth. He was clearly not interested in books or studies. After Sanjay finished school, he decided he wanted to have nothing more to do with books. He went to the Government College of Arts & Crafts, Kolkotta and graduated in 1982 in fine arts.

The youngest son of four children of a retired account officer, Sanjay says he was never aware that he had a hidden artistic talent and an enormous capacity for hard work. “I got appalling grades in the first year,” he laughs.

After graduating, he joined an ad agency, Clarion, as an illustrator and shifted to Delhi. “On the first day, they asked me to do one an ad on tyres.

However much I tried, the nature of work did not agree with my artistic self,” says Sanjay. He left the agency nine months later and joined Hindustan Thomson Associates. “They gave me the freedom to freelance,” he recalls. Sanjay rented a place in Delhi and managed to complete 16 or 17 watercolours and some oils. He exhibited them in Dhoomimal Gallery. As luck would have it, all the five water colour were sold out within a week. The year was 1988.

Sanjay’s figurative images are quite close to those found in the works of the Dutch realist painters or the French 18th century painters.

Along with homes and families, Sanjay’s work consists of realistic portraiture. Like the exhibition he did on late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s portraits. There are no larger than life images here. The interiors against which he has painted Gandhi are untelling and cryptic behind their dark brown layers.

Sanjay says that sometimes he misses being that little boy, who would walk along the footpath at Park Street, in Calcutta, towards the Outram Ghat or Howrah bridge, with a drawing board in hand. “Now I sit in tall buildings, and have lost touch with reality,” he sighs. Sanjay Bhattacharya spends his time living between Delhi and Kolkotta