Manali: Making a name in the art circles, Suman Gupta is here to paint landscapes of the Himalayan Pir Panchal Ranges. Speaking to Hill Post he says that hill cultures have always fascinated him and it was time to explore them.
He said that landscapes for him were not merely hills, rivers and the forests as physical spaces to be consumed for their beauty but they become sites for ideological interrogation of socio-political concerns in a seamless, non-intrusive fashion.
The landscapes are locales where leitmotifs such as hope for peace, Utopian dreams-capes, loss of innocence, and millenarianism; as the vertical intrusion of the sublime in the horizontal flux of cyclical time, play out, he said.
Recipient of the prestigious “Lorenzo IL Magnifico” for his “Untitled” work at Florence Biennial, Italy and National award by Lalit Kala academy, New Delhi Gupta was invited to show his work at the India special exhibition at 5th“Beijing International Art Biennale” in China in the year 2012.
Five of Suman Gupta’s masterpieces are part of Patiala Palace collection, which houses some of the finest paintings of Indian and European art.
Although, all the paintings of the collection are realistic, they have a strange surrealistic feel that makes them quite distinctive.
‘Late Night song on the hill’ depicts two folk musicians playing their instruments while two village women hear them with rapt attention. The same two women reappear in ‘Across the River’.
More than the surroundings, the painting titled ‘Spring’ has the beaming face of a young village lass announcing the arrival of spring. ‘Pony Express’ has two ponies and a colt crossing a high altitude pass in the hills while a young woman looks on.
Gupta has held a solo exhibition of his paintings at United Nations Office at Palais des Nations, Geneva. Last year, he did curate a show of Indian contemporary art in Cyprus.
He also won the Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award for his work “Blue River and the God of Fish”.
Sanjay Dutta, an engineer by qualification but is a journalist by choice.
He has worked for the premier new agency Press Trust of India and leading English daily Indian Express.
With more than a decade of experience, he has been highlighting issues related to environment, tourism and other aspects affecting mountain ecology.
Sanjay Dutta lives in a village close to Manali in Kullu valley of Himachal.
