The River in the Sky: A Solo Exhibition by Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri

Overview

Emami Art is pleased to announce The River in the Sky, a solo exhibition of Sibaprasad Karchaudhuri's abstract explorations. This marks the artist's second large solo exhibition at Emami Art, featuring his early works on paper from the late 1980s and more recent paintings that explore the interconnections between abstraction and lived experiences. 

A renowned pedagogue and one of India’s most versatile and prolific abstract artists, Karchaudhuri (b. 1944) is a painter, designer, weaver, and printmaker celebrated for his vibrant and colourful works. A student of Applied Art at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, he transitioned directly to abstraction without making a detour around figurative art, unlike many of his contemporaries. Initially inspired by the major artists of Abstract Expressionism, he has developed a rich language of abstractions, drawing on ideas and experiences from his long and varied professional career at the NID, Ahmedabad; various Weavers Service Centres (WSC); and Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, where he joined as a faculty in the Department of Design and Textile in 1990.  

While his earlier exhibition with us in 2023 showcased his textiles, drawings, paintings, and prints, and the diversity and versatility of his oeuvre, The River in the Sky focuses on one of the persistent traits of his work: the relationship between his non-representational abstract language and memories and experiences of people, places, and cultures he has encountered. 

The unique, stylistically similar works on paper from the late 1980s, particularly the series on the Barari Women (1985-87), recall the earlier drawings and prints he created in Calcutta and San Jose University, America. He created them when he was in the WSC and posted in Bhagalpur, Bihar. The new surroundings of Bhagalpur, its people and rural life away from the city, influenced his abstract work, altering and retaining some of his earlier formal dispositions. Inspired by the local tribal culture of Bihar, bright colours began to emerge in his otherwise monochromatic palette. 

The recent colourful works in the exhibition are deeply rooted in his experience of Santiniketan, where he has lived and worked for over three decades. This complex pictorial exercise showcases an abstract artist's attempt to capture the essence of a place, mood, and landscape while limiting himself to a playful minimalist experimentation with basic forms, for instance, the triangle.  

“The River in the Sky" series (2025), the source of the show’s title, exemplifies this approach, evoking a sense of rural landscape – its expanse and horizon – through colours, spatial arrangement and shapes without representation. There is, in fact, no sky or river depicted in the painting. The title is strategic rather than representational, outfitting the viewers who seek specific, known images or meanings in abstract art.