Bikash Bhattacharjee

Bikash Bhattacharjee was born on 21 June 1940 in Calcutta (now Kolkata), India. He trained at the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship in Kolkata, completing a Diploma in Fine Arts in 1963. In 1968 he began teaching at his alma mater, the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, and from 1973 to 1982 he taught at the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata.

Bhattacharjee built his reputation on a realist and surrealist figurative style, painting portraits and emotionally charged compositions rooted in the everyday life of Bengal. His work was recognized early, with an award from the Academy of Fine Arts, Calcutta, in 1962, followed by an award from the Birla Academy of Art and Culture and the Lalit Kala Akademi National Award, both in 1971. The West Bengal state government named him a recipient of Bangla Ratna in 1987, and the Government of India awarded him the Padma Shri in 1988.

He died on 18 December 2006 at Belle Vue Nursing Home in Kolkata, following a prolonged illness. He was 66.

Institutions that present Bhattacharjee's work describe him as a central figure in a western realist and surrealist tradition within Indian painting. The recurring critical thread is his ability to hold photographic precision and surrealist unease together in the same picture, using that tension to describe the anxieties of Kolkata's middle class.

Bhattacharjee's secondary market is concentrated in Indian salerooms, principally AstaGuru and Saffronart, with listings also appearing on Sotheby's and tracked by Bidsquare, Invaluable, and askART. MutualArt reports his all-time auction high as USD 434,737 for an untitled work sold at AstaGuru Auction House in 2026, though the exact sale date has not been disclosed in available sources. A separate 2026 report describes a different sale of three canvases for approximately Rs 3.99 crore as record-breaking, without naming the works, house, or exact date, and it is unclear whether this refers to the same lot or a different one. Collectors should treat any single reported "record" for this artist with some caution until a primary auction house confirms the exact lot, price, and date.

No catalogue raisonne exists for Bhattacharjee, and no single gallery or estate representative is documented as his exclusive handler; CIMA and Akara Art each actively exhibit and deal in his work, which means provenance research should draw on more than one source. The reported auction record itself carries some uncertainty: MutualArt cites a USD 434,737 sale at AstaGuru in 2026, while a separate 2026 report describes a different multi-work sale as record-breaking without full agreement on price, title, or date. Wikipedia lists his paintings as held by the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Lalit Kala Akademi, and the Ministry of Education in New Delhi, and by the Chandigarh University Museum and Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal; this is the only source located for these holdings, so the list should be treated as indicative rather than independently verified.