Annual Art Exhibition commences at ICCR, Kolkata

The exhibition was held in association with Rabindranath Tagore Centre, Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) and Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India.

Nearly 205 traditional and contemporary art items, selected by an expert panel, were on display.

Regional director of ICCR, Kolkata, Gautam Dey, chief guest at the event, said, “Art is not in fashion with the youth in India, especially those who are not directly related to it.”

Yet, 60 per cent of the painters in India are Bengali, he pointed out.

“Art that we can relate to is the greatest form of art, it transcends to literature,”said writer and Professor Nrisingha Prasad Bhaduri.

The judges panel consisted of Subrata Chowdhury, Tarapada Banerjee, Shukla Poddar, Partha Dasgupta and others.

For the traditional art category, the recipients of awards were Tapas Karmakar (dokra), Imran Chitrakar (patachitra), and Gostha Baidya (wood carvings). For the contemporary art category, the award winners were Sukanta Adhikary (paintings), Amely Debnath (drawings), Amit Rudra (graphics), Jaladhar Naskar (sculptures) and Ritwik Mishra (photography), while certificates of merit were given away to Amitava Singha and Tanmoy Roychowdhury (paintings), Keshav Lahoti and Sandip Barui (drawings), Jannatul Royhana and Khokan Giri (graphics), Anupam Das and Partha Saha (sculptures) and Anneysha Chatterjee and Rajshekhar Paul (photography).

Professor Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, VC of RBU and Chairman-Sahitya Akademi, presided over the inauguration.

The exhibition is on at the Bengal Art Gallery, Abanindranath Tagore Gallery and the Sculpture Court of the ICCR from 3 pm to 8 pm, until Thursday.

(Reporting by Shilpa Salwan)