When Nikhil Biswas died in 1966 at the age of 36, Indian art lost one of its most distinctive draughtsmen. His death came as a shock to the world of art and culture. He is now regarded as one of the major figures of Indian contemporary art in the post-independence period; with Shyamal Dutta Ray, Sudhir Bairagi, Debnath Mukherjee, Hare Krishna Ghosh and Subhochari Dasgupta, he formed a group called Chitrangshu in the 1950s. Nikhil Biswas is a name that comes up often, yet he remains something of an enigma: the lack of documentation and the scarcity of material on him have made him difficult to place.
The comparison between Indian modern art and Indian architecture is illuminating. M.F. Husain might be considered the artistic equivalent of the Taj Mahal, but just as there are hundreds of notable sites beyond the Taj Mahal — from city complexes like Hampi to minor havelis, each culturally significant in its own way — there is more to Indian art than its best-known names. Indian art institutions are underdeveloped: museums are under-resourced, and galleries have yet to become the kind of institutions that support artists for their contribution to India's heritage rather than a handful judged commercially viable. This is the paradox of Indian modernism. Many well-known artists have produced work of little lasting interest, while too much attention goes to the name and not enough to the art. Nikhil Biswas, like Shanu Lahiri or Nirode Mazumdar, is known but not widely collected: in the absence of serious research, the market defaults to familiar names rather than to the work itself.
Nikhil Biswas's art began with the human condition, and his mature work is turbulent. During the communal upheaval in Bengal of 1946-47, he was a boy of 15; those experiences pulled him towards a more direct and impetuous mark-making. He had already been affected by the Bengal famine of 1943, followed by the communal violence that came with Independence in 1947. That pain went into his paintings and drawings, into the frenetic energy of his line, which speaks of a controlled emotional frenzy. His drawings show a growing naturalism, a preference for figures in movement and a clear interest in understanding anatomical form.
In his short life he became known to critics, connoisseurs and collectors through frequent exhibitions in Calcutta and through group shows in other cities. Foreigners living in India began to take notice of his work, as they had earlier with Jamini Roy; friends even nicknamed him "Jamini Roy Junior," a name that carried a tinge of envy as much as admiration. Cars queued outside his mud-walled, thatched-roof studio on Nobo Roy Lane, opposite the Bengal Government Press at Chetla, across the Tolly's Nullah, near the Kalighat temple and Alipore Central Jail. Biswas was prolific and did not let hardship stand in the way of his work. Unable to afford canvas and paint in his early years, he used sheets of drawing paper, newsprint and brown paper, working in ordinary writing ink and Chinese ink with brush or pen. He never complained about his poverty, nor lamented his inability to buy canvas or oil paint; he worked instead in the linear, monochrome black-and-white manner he did best, and turned to transparent and opaque watercolour when he wanted colour. He joined the Government College of Art and Craft in 1950 and studied there until 1955, marrying against his mother's wishes during that time. He worked briefly, alongside Meera Mukherjee, with the Indonesian artist Affandi, from whom he learned to work on large rolls of newsprint. His monochromes, built from bold and subtle line, have real evocative power: the lines seem to emerge and explode with an almost unbearable intensity.
His work, whether drawn from his own inner life or from the world outside, has the power to move a viewer — birds, beasts, scenes of violence, clowns, or moments from the last days of Christ. The black tones suit the work: the world of nightmares is black, not colourful. He was disciplined, painting every day without sparing himself; painting was his life. He would get up, squeeze paint onto the palette, mix it with oil, choose his brush carefully, then attack the paper or canvas with sudden, controlled force.
There is a sense, looking at his work, that time stood still for him and the creative impulse took over completely. A viewer can feel the power of his hand and the sweep of his life in it — his dreams, his struggles and his achievements, his whole personality set down on paper. To view his work is to meet him again.
Vinayak Pasricha.