b. 1949, Kolkata, West Bengal.

Sudhangsu’s paintings on Varanasi creates an autonomous space for itself.  They highlight a position that is elevated from the confines of the marketplace. Sudhangsu’s brush is familiar with the visuals of Varanasi. His earlier works have captured the spiritual city in detail - its people, ancient architecture, the famous umbrella-adorning ghats and the exuberantly flowing of the holy Ganga. But what is refreshingly new in this series is that the visuals break free from the tyranny of formal representations and builds a relationship between colours and lines. The ghats, the boats, the umbrellas and the old houses are oblongs of red or squares of ochre and viridian, punctuated with blues. T here is a pleasant accord between colours, warm and cool, which create a visual vibration, a dialogue of luminosity. The format is intelligently broken up into uneven terrain of transparent colours, intercepted by occasional bold lines, dots and dashes and a whisper of paper - white. The artist has been experimenting with his colour palette for long and his Varanasi series is the epitome of that search. Each city is endowed with a unique colour and atmosphere; has a signature of its own, in fact his Varanasi series distinctively stands out as his signature style of its myriad expressions. In an age where artists are painting canvases, keeping mostly the commercial angle in mind: it is courageous of the artist to stick to the aesthetics and its values. Relish the city, known as the ‘kingdom of spirituality’, and encounter an emancipation of an artistic kind, in a fresh light as portrayed in this series on Varanasi by Sudhangsu Bandyopadhyay.

He lives and works in Kolkata.