Bhagat Singh

Bhagat Singh is inspired by artist A. Ramachandran, who had been his teacher at Jamia Millia, is quite obvious in the young artist’s stylistic expression. One sees an exuberant celebration of nature in Bhagat Singh’s work.

There is, however, in Bhagat Singh’s images an element of fantasy not unmixed with a hint of menace in his representation of vegetation. Trees, shrubs, flowering and fruit plants fill the canvas with their sinuously spreading branches like the tangled tentacles of some giant marine creature. The abundant display of fruits and flowers signal an overwhelming plentitude of nature.

Sometimes the lavishness is linked with a touch of venom, as in the image of snakes entwined with the coiling roots of the lotus plant. In a metaphor of venom transformed into nectar, lotuses spring out of the gaping mouth of a snake. The image gives an interesting view of a sub-aqueous world with almost mythical allusions.

Bhagat Singh brings to his canvasses a pleasing sense of design whose fruits, flowers and birds are enjoined in a joyous choreography. His parrots greedily pecking at fruit and thronging trees with fruits and flowers create a vibrant pattern of colours and forms. One sees in Bhagat Singh’s use of colours an unbridled vivacity. Bright reds, yellows, greens fill the senses with their bold saturation. The artist likes to heighten the sense of fantasy with the brilliant hues that he uses.

The impression of fantasy is also heightened with the slight exaggeration of the forms. The white flowers that spring out of giant bulbous calyx seem to have a magical presence. The floral forms seem to hover between reality and a dream-like vividness. The fecundity of the papaya tree in fruit is one such painting where one steps over the threshold of reality into a space that exists in one’s imagination. The accentuation in the depiction of forms of fruits and leaves has a startling impact on the viewers.

Bhagat Singh introduces stylisation in his rendering of forms and painting sky, ground and water. He uses many of the form of stylisation from miniature tradition and sometimes he invents his own like the rosettes he paints to depict clouds – Ella Datta