Biren De (India, 1926-2011)


August '88 Entitled 'AUGUST '88' on reverseOil on canvas117 x 81cm (46 1/16 x 31 7/8in).
|Provenance:Private Collection, Dubai.Born in Faridpur, Bengal – in what is now Bangladesh, Biren De travelled to Kolkata where he attended the Government College of Arts and Craft. Like many of his counterparts, Biren De's early works were figural and impressionist in style. Biren De became a well regarded portrait artist, his works reminiscent of Augustus John. He captured an essence of the subject through masterful chiaroscuro and tonal impasto. In the 1950s Biren De developed a distinct form of cubist realism, pastoral figures were drawn with rudimentary lines and colours. In 1951 he exhibited at the Salon De Mai, Paris, and in 1959, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship which took him to the United States. Biren De is most noted for his 'neo tantric' style works of the late 1960s onwards. It was a label he distanced himself from, preferring the moniker 'Symbolic-abstract expressionism' to describe his style."My paintings, I believe, are organic examples of the total me; of what I am and what I would like to be: a continuous striving and therefore, a struggle, to put the shattered pieces together and make a composite whole. My guideline is oscillation between two points: between the peace of graveyard and the peace of the centre of the sun. Either way there is no END, no finality."(The Flamed Mosaic – Indian Contemporary Painting, Neville Tulli p. 294)