Biren De’s art practice underwent a major shift towards the late 1950s. That is when his figurative compositions with their cubist planes began to fragment, turning into free shapes and eventually coalescing into his signature neo-tantra paintings that remain his most well-known works. De used blues, reds, yellows, and greens, to explore the potency of pure energy and human consciousness. Eschewing tantra symbols popular with his contemporaries, De created concentric rings, crescents and orbs, and used colours alone to transfix the viewer’s gaze, drawing it inwards and closer to a ‘source’ of ‘light’ to kindle an inner consciousness.
published references
Singh, Kishore, ed., Indian Abstracts: An Absence of Form (New Delhi: DAG, 2014), p. 158 Singh, Kishore, ed., A Visual History of Indian Modern Art, Volume IX: The Sacred and The Sensual (New Delhi: DAG, 2015), p. 1629
Biren De
Untitled
1974
Oil on canvas
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Biren De
Untitled
1974
Oil on canvas
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