The Magician

The Magician comes from that stage of Amitava’s career when he had begun to use blacks and reds in his canvas starkly, compared to works of the previous decades. However, in a departure from the traditional connotation of these two colours, he did not use these as metaphors for violence. This canvas is especially interesting as it brings together many of the artist’s tropes—dots and dashes, the introverted figure, a limb, and also a head, though not in side-profile as most of his other head studies are. The protagonist seems to have conjured up all the elements from Amitava’s repertoire in one canvas, thereby turning into a magician.