Swaraj Das born in 1983 in Kolkata, he has come up as one with the contemporary painters of extra-ordinary promise and repute. He passed the B.V.A from the Govt. College of Art & Craft, ‘Calcutta University’.
His exhibitions in India have already earned great appreciation. He had his first solo show in Delhi, at Triveni Kala Sangam. Galleries are India habitat centre, ‘convention foyer’, and the open palm court gallery (New Delhi) were filled in with his paintings. Academy of Fine Arts (Kolkata) had also experienced his works of arts. Galleries in Pennsylvania watercolor society’s state museum (USA) had also been with him.
Awards: 2012: 33rd international juried exhibition Pennsylvania watercolor society’s president’s award in (USA).
2012: Pennsylvania watercolor society 1st place award for best water color painting award, in (USA).
Scholarship: 2002 Ravi Jain Memorial Scholarship from Govt. College of Art & Craft.
A glimpse about his life in the words of Indian poet, art and literary critic and curator Keshav Malik
INDIA’S BRIMFUL ARTERIES
Art to the average person means the ability to copy nature. Remove the prejudice and supply a means of expression and something of value is achieved. Particularly is this evident in the making of abstract designs and patterns. Released from the need to copy, and encouraged to produce paintings that one might call constructive doodles (a la Rabindranath Tagore), and an individual can indulge his fantasy, his imagination and his pleasure in playing about with lines and colors and of making rhythmical gestures without the fear of representation. The results can be lively and beautiful, for a genuine opportunity has been given him with brush and color and of making rhythmical mudras that spring forth directly from an inner vitality and which has its counterpart in lines and forms and colors, both of nature and the world of art.
Swaraj’s work is a street life one. Copying this vivid actuality, the work is yet turned into fine artistic design. Long experience of art material has given him a good idea of the technical restrictions, problems and opportunities in his genre of craft. So that we observe how he grapples with it all. Through handling varieties of materials, the artist has learnt touch (which, after all, supplies so much of the information which appears to come through the eye); thus his representational work’s relative suppleness and characteristic beauty, as also its suitability for different artistic purposes. Experiences with design have opened the way to the artist to the appreciation of forms and movements in his art craft. Whether the artist’s style is realistic, abstract, oriental, western, ancient or modern does not therefore matter. What matters is that his experiences are animated by imaginative pictorial expression. Having gone over his compositions, it is evident that his creative energy is ample.
In many of his paintings we see an invisible line of light, of all kind of traffic flowing rhythmically over paper or canvas. In this way he achieves complete colored designs. The lines are used as lines of movement and shapes. At moments the development is wholly imaginative; motifs are now grown on the surface of a given surface with variations of patterns and textures. In sum, this work tries to renew and refresh India’s root culture, its public ‘life-lines’.
