Untitled

Bimal Dasgupta earned his early spurs as a landscapist, excelling in watercolour, though he tried other mediums too. His unconventional colours sat well with his explorations of abstraction in a medium not traditionally associated with it. In this painting, Dasgupta traces a bright red light at the bottom of a jungle at night, giving us a bird’s-eye-view of the natural forest fire—often due to extreme heat in the subcontinent during summers. After travelling feebly for some length, it crackles in its full effulgence at the other end, creating an extraordinary night time vision of the earth and its elements.