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The Hindu : The experience of living in different cultures or may be it issomething else… I tend to work in the introspective mode,” says Kolkata-based artist, Amitabh Sengupta. “The mundane stories of human life, feelings of everyday, all seem to be transcending through time and space, yet they are so similar in all lands. Love and despair, pain and ecstasy all have such similar human meanings that are reflected in expressions of cultures. Thus, past as we infer, continues in the present, transformed through time-meanings… With such thoughts, my paintings have developed during the past 25 years.”

Born in Calcutta in 1941, Sengupta began a distinguished career in the arts by graduating in painting from Government College of Arts and Crafts in 1963. A French government scholarship in Printmaking and Painting took him to Paris where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts (1966 – 68).

Oddly, the art scene in Paris did not stimulate him at all. In fact, he found many European paintings and sculptures to be actually ugly! Strangely, he was never attracted to the works of Pablo Picasso as much as, say, Marc Chagall or even Salvador Dali. What enchanted him were the cine-collections in Cinematheque. “I was for the first time exposed to some wonderful European masters of cinema. I became a great admirer of Ingmar Bergman; his films like the “Wild Strawberries” left on me a lasting impression. I think I learned more watching films than studying at the college.”

Sengupta, incidentally, did have a personal connection with films. Karuna Banerji, (who played the central role of Sarbojaya (Apu’s mother) in Satyajit Ray’s masterpiece, “Pather Panchali” was his aunt. He remembers her strong character and robust personality as an activist in theatre and politics. She was close to Sengupta’s middle class but humanist father.

On return from Europe, Sengupta lived in Chennai and Delhi through 1969-76. The next 11 years were…More