Mumbai, Sep 6 (Inditop.com) A group of Bengali artists and a sculptor managed to win the hearts of Mumbai’s art aficionados with an expo called “Open Window” this week.
The eight participating artists and a sculptor said that they were pleased by the response as around 200-300 people had visited the exhibition daily since it opened last Monday at the prestigious Jehangir Art Gallery in south Mumbai.
“We were sure that the response would have been even bigger, but Mumbaikars were tied up with the important 12-day Ganeshotsav and also it has been raining here since the past days,” said Tapas Konar, joint secretary of the group, also named Open Window.
The eight artists, who included one woman – Sudeshna Halder – had put up a total 27 paintings, while the only sculptor in the group, Gopinath Roy, had put up four sculptures.
The sculptures include three landscapes, one each in bronze, resin and resin-and-stonedust.
“There is also one spacescape in bronze. Landscapes in drawings and paintings are very popular. I specialize in landscapes and spacescapes in metal and other raw material,” Roy told Inditop.
The Open Window group was formed in 1997 in Kolkata with the intention of pursuing artistic expressions arising from “a mind free of any bindings or inhibitions,” according to Konar.
In the past 12 years, the group, among the oldest in Kolkata, has attracted a lot of attention in India and abroad. Besides holding exhibitions, it also holds regular workshops for other artists and felicitates senior artists like Paritosh Sen and Jogen Chowdhury.
Explaining the reason behind the group, Konar said that it helps them to project themselves in a better and focused manner before the art community and the world at large.
“For individual artists, especially in the early part of their career, it can be quite difficult to manage many things, but as a group they can make a better impact, especially in key markets like Mumbai and New Delhi,” he said.
The Open Window participants at the week-long exhibition included Hiran Mitra, Tapas Konar, Sunil De, Samir Aich, Pradip Kumar Rakshit, Prabhat Basu, Amitava Dhar, Gopinath Roy and Sudeshna Halder.
