Born in Kolkata, Atin Basak studied
painting in this city and later received his MA in printmaking
from a Baroda art college.
All through his career he has received several awards,
prominent among them the 1999 - 2000 Charles Wallace
India Trust Arts Award and a Scholarship from the French
Government to work in their country as a visiting artist.
Atin Basak's recluses and sages that he creates in
his etchings and lithographs have a certain quality
that places them above and beyond the ‘madding
crowd' of humanity. Although they are alone, they seem
to be perceptive, judicious and erudite people who have
seen and experienced the world as it is, and then made
the choice to live apart from it. In works with titles
like ‘Hermit' and ‘Solitude', the artist's
flawlessly controlled use of shade and texture helps
to build the characters of these subjects adeptly depicting
their self-confidence and personal power. Basak places
Sanskrit letters in these works to similarly portray
a sense of age-old tradition, understanding and wisdom
in a world that seems to have forgotten the value of
everything that is not modern.
Collections of his works are housed in the National
Gallery of Modern Art and the Lalit Kala Academy in
New Delhi, the Baroda Palace Museum, the British Council
in Bombay as well as in personal collections in Bombay,
Calcutta, Baroda, Ahmedabad, Belgium, Singapore, Hong
Kong, Switzerland, Germany, France, Japan and the UK.
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