Color Saga
THE BOOKS
Bhaskar Hande comes from a traditional farmers family in rural India. Though, by choosing to go to Arts School, he distanced himself from traditional parental expectations, his attachment to the land - its past glory; its inherent fertility; its myths and its light and colours - remains the most pronounced accent in his work as well as in his person. Also it is the inherited tenacity and boundless energy that has helped him to arrive at where he is today.
In the early Eighties Bhaskar Hande came to Europe. First as a student at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Then back again to clarify or in a sense to put himself together.
The first act, that of discarding a traditional and secure occupation for something as fanciful as Art left him, in the eyes of some, very poor. The second act, the decision to take shelter under the North European sky made him, in the eyes of the same, quite rich. All through this Bhaskar Hande has only been pursuing his own dreams and doing his best to give expression to his own creativity.
Question him about this 'loss and gains' and Bhaskar would just shrug his shoulders and talk to you about the colour yellow. He would point it out to you that transience is characteristic of the colour yellow and therefore traditionally used to represent wealth.
Press on and as he begins to articulate, descriptions become graphic and imagery poetic and one is left in no doubt that not only has he very well preserved the impressions of a childhood spent and a way of life participated in that rural Indian village of Umbraj but what he attempts is to convey all that, selectively, through visual means or at times through poetry.