About

Samita Basu’s career spans over three decades. She specialises in figurative work and portraiture and is equally proficient in oil, pastel, watercolour and charcoal though, of late, she prefers to work more with pastel and charcoal/conte pencil than any other medium. At heart, she considers herself a storyteller, her work deeply influenced by what she sees around her and the empathy she has for the characters that dot her creative narrative, especially those less fortunate than her, particularly her female protagonists, with whom she shares a special bond. Through their eyes, she reflects upon the human condition and paints stories that are sometimes dark, sometimes brazen, sometimes despairing, sometimes vivacious, often inspiring but, in their telling, always truthful.

Shows: Since her solo debut in 1993 in Mumbai, where she spent 20 eventful years, she has had nine critically and commercially successful solo exhibitions and participated in at least two dozen group shows, including the very first Harmony Show of the Reliance Group and two each of the annual art shows organised by the Bombay Art Society and the Art Society of India, Bombay. Since her return to Kolkata, she’s already had two solo shows, the first at Chemould Art Gallery, the second at Weavers’ Studio and this, the third, will be at Maya Art Space. In addition, her works have featured in half a dozen group shows, too.

She’s been blessed to have had very commercially successful shows, most of her paintings going to the private collections of discerning art buyers like Aziz Premji of Wipro, Minal and Lalit Modi of Modi Enterprises, Dilip Piramal of VIP Industries, Dilip and Shobhaa De, Jasjit Singh of United Capsules, Nalini and Srinivas Murthy of Unilever, Shanti Pathmanathan, renowned art curator, Nari Mehta formerly of Citibank, Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, Giuseppe Degiosa of the Consulate of Italy, Late Deepak Chakrabarty, Soumen and Manjusri Basu, Prabha Parameswaran and Ashish Mitra, Saswati Guhathakurta, Debabrata and Shukla Haldar, Swapan and Roma Basu, Utpal and Shelly Ganguly, Drs. Jyotsna and Jayanta Basu, Swapan and Sucharita Bhattacharya and other friends and well-wishers, too many to list, in India, Singapore, Dubai, U.S.A., U.K. and the Caribbean and to commercial organisations, like Sahara India, Bharat Petroleum, Quest India, Indian Oil Corporation, Ramada Inn, United Capsules, Drish Shoes Ltd., etc. However, while seeing a consistent demand for her work is, indeed, exhilarating, even more satisfying to her was the critical recognition that she was fortunate to get across both English and vernacular dailies in Mumbai and national magazines like Elle, Femina and Outlook.

It was a high point in her art career to be selected by ELLE magazine as one of the “four women artists whose canvases mirror the over-morphing female sensibility” and to be in the exalted company of Arpana Caur, Rekha Rodwittiya and Nalini Malani and be one of four artists who, as they “continue to distil and question the changing world around them, (makes) one marvel at their near-telepathic ties – be it sexuality, male-dominated politics, ecology versus destruction….And as their brushstrokes travel over space and time, we look forward to more visual insights; a fresh sensibility that just might embroider a better world.”

Between 2017 and 2024, Samita Basu was the consulting art critic for Anandabazar Patrika, a post she relinquished recently to prepare for her impending retrospective show at Maya Art Space.