Sakti Burman Biography
Sakti Burman was born in Calcutta (India) in 1935.
In 1951, Sakti enrolled in a five-year Fine Arts course at the Government School of Art (now Government College of Art & Craft) in Calcutta. Here, he found an atmosphere characterized by great freedom of thought and made friends with many of his classmates, who would later become successful artists. However, for Sakti, the city of Calcutta was only a starting point. Inspired by great European artists like Van Gogh, he wanted to dedicate his life to art as they had. He declared: "If I really wanted to make art my career, what I had learned so far wasn't enough." With his talent, his tenacity and his ambition, he was admitted to the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris in 1956.
After Paris, he decided to return to Calcutta and stay there for a year. He organized an exhibition in the city and another at the All India Fine Arts and Craft Society gallery in New Delhi, where two of his paintings were purchased. Back in France, galleries continued to sell his work and the Piccadilly Gallery in London still received requests for works. In 1973, an American couple decided to transform his works into graphic prints. His creations were very successful and customers requested more and more watercolors. However, the real turning point came when the couple decided to transform his works into lithographs.
He won the Prix des Etrangers in 1956. Some of the more recent solo exhibitions of his work include a retrospective at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, Mumbai, Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta; London and New York in 2009; Art Musings and Maison de I'Unesco in 2008. Burman's works have also been exhibited in Los Angeles in 2001 and in New York in 2002; at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1975 and 1994; and at the French Biennials in 1963, 1965 and 1967. The artist lives and works in Paris.
