Lot 34: NIKHIL BISWAS (1930-1966)

NIKHIL BISWAS (1930-1966) Autograph manuscript journal, in Bengali and English, signed ('Nikhil Biswas') and initialed in places ('N' or 'NB'), 1963, illustrated with pen and ink sketches by the author, approximately 375 leaves, 8vo (187 x 130mm), in a 'Soor's Crown Diary' notebook, red card covers with the presentation stamp of Neogy Chatterjee Transport Contractors, Calcutta.

S Bhattacharya, ed., Men Women and Other Drawings, Kolkata, 2005 (several leaves illustrated)

Acquired from the artist's family

A founding member of the Calcutta Group of Painters and The Society of Contemporary Artists -- also based in Calcutta, the city of his birth -- Biswas received international acclaim as an artist, but struggled to make a secure living from his work, supplementing his income by working as an art teacher and eventually dying impoverished at the age of 36. Yet the rate of his artistic output was staggering, especially in the last years of his life, his journals acting as a crucible for the visual imagery and thoughts that would then be expressed on canvas. Mixing speculative musings on the nature of life, many of which evince a fascination with the relationship between the human and animal worlds, with original fragments of poetry and prose, the written portions of Nikhil Biswas' diary complement the pen and ink sketches that sit beside, or occasionally are superimposed upon, the text. Sometimes the relationship between text and image is direct - as with annotation beside a violently contorted figure, 'I hate politicians and statesmen, let me raise my sword against them' - at others, the jottings express the thoughts and beliefs that Biswas brought to bear on his artwork. That 'The feeling is this that the human body is the solid form of nature' reflects the interest Biswas evidently felt as an artist in the human form - the sketches here depict both male and female figures, both alone and in groups, sometimes intertwined - and its relationship to the natural world, as seen in the sketch titled 'Women/Sun/Youth', and the juxtaposition of human and animal imagery. The erotic element present in certain sketches also receives verbalisation; in a short composition, beginning 'In 1953 I came back home and found her in bed' and employing luxuriant naturalistic imagery, Biswas describes 'the surprise experience with three women, the sun and the whistling youth'. The line of the pen referred back to by the artist is crucial for depicting 'the nervous quality of the flesh and blood', and the intense, expressive hatchings of ink are used to bring an emotional eloquence to the sketches - whether human, animal, or the strange, minotaur-like creature accompanied by Biswas' annotation: 'Not an ordinary head but the head of the man who is the joint effort of man and animal'. Part artist's manifesto (as when he explains the rationale behind his 'Combat' series, exhibited in 1963) and part experimental platform, the journal of Nikhil Biswas represents an insight into the creative process of the artist, and the philosophy that underlay his work.