Printmaker-painter Ananda Moy Banerji opens his solo exhibition Multiple Encounters at the Lalit Kala Akademi Galleries this evening. “Multiple Encounters,” states the artist, “is a process, a thinking, a perpetual journey, even as Human Landscapes encompasses the entire gamut of human experiences from the physical to the spiritual and beyond.”

Sometime in his youth, Ananda Moy had disappeared for a while, having gone “in search of beauty”. To my mind, over the years this search for beauty, at every level, has remained the leitmotif of Ananda Moy’s work, whatever be his thematic concerns as an artist and a sensitive human being. Thematic concern, as a matter of fact, has seldom been the central concern of the viewer beholding Ananda’s works, so powerful and engaging have been his line, form and colours, so characteristic and yet ever renewing itself, varying, experimenting, introducing something fresh.

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Drawing an analogy between the art of printmaking and the term multiple encounters, he explained, “Right from the creation of a plate to pulling out a print ~ it’s all about multiple encounters, encompassing the number of colours, the creation of layers and surfaces, the tools and methods deployed, each step ~ and there are so many ~ is an encounter by itself.

“Likewise it is in life, individually and collectively, wherein each experience goes down to form the sum total of tradition and character. This not only connotes or talks about arriving at a point repeatedly, but also about points of departure and return.”

Art, it is believed, is transformative. So whether it be in painting of human landscapes, or in encounters at printmaking, Ananda’s ability and finesse in transforming each of them into a thing of beauty and positivity is marked. For the most painful of serious of subjects, Ananda’s works are seldom if ever beset by gloom; force, even a sense of the grim, yes, but never the gloom of virtual or perceived defeat. From the crescent moon to the boat on the river, signifying the flow of love, life and hope, Banerji has traversed his artistic span to “extend its parameter beyond traditional technical practices to create a series of a hundred images from just ten drawings”, he pointed out, “suggesting interlinked and interlocked images”.

“Multiplicity is in a way a mathematical formation, with but a little impetus from the world of intuition, leaving aside the logical periphery, I enjoy creating the hundreds of unique printed images, which I prefer to call printed drawings,” Ananda explained. So, with ten drawings, ten stencils, ten ink containers, ten screens and ten tracing sheets as his tools this time, he went on to create more than a hundred autographic printed images, expressing a sense of unconcealed satisfaction in the venture.

Like always the smoothness of lines, faultless draughtsmanship, measured surfaces alternated with textured and smoothness of colours, juxtaposition of line and form, are all attributes stemming from the artists dedication to his craft in his search for beauty. Sheathing serious discourse in high aesthetics stands among Ananda Moy’s strongest attributes.