born 1935 · Calcutta
Sakti Burman
A Calcutta-born painter who has lived in France since 1956. He sets Durga and other figures from Hindu mythology into dense, marbled surfaces of rich colour.
Sakti Burman was born in Calcutta in 1935 and grew up in what is now Bangladesh. He graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta in 1956 and went to Paris that year on a French government scholarship, to the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where he won the Prix des Étrangers. He has lived in France ever since and shows regularly in India.
His surfaces are built up in dense, dotted layers until they look marbled, or like weathered stone. Into them he sets figures from Hindu mythology, Durga above all, along with boats, umbrellas and scenes of domestic ritual. The colour is rich. The mood is unhurried. He is also a lithographer, and has made sculpture.
The family is artistic on every side. His wife, Maite Delteil, is a French painter. Their daughter, Maya Burman, lives and works in France as an artist too. His niece is the painter Jayasri Burman, who is married to the artist Paresh Maity.
On 10 March 2016 the French ambassador to India, François Richier, made him a Chevalier of the Légion d’honneur in New Delhi.
In Japan, the Glenbarra Art Museum in Himeji holds a group of his paintings.