From the angle of price, I have always considered Bengal artists the best. The reason is that these artists, whether they are from Kolkata or Santiniketan, are generally better trained than the most in the country, except perhaps those of Vadodara.
They have other advantages too. They have the unbroken tradition of masterly art, whether it is that of Gaganendranath and Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, Benode Bihari Mukherjee and Ram Kinkar Baig, followed up by Chitta Prasad, Somenath Hore, Paritosh Sen, Ganesh Haloi or Shuvaprasanna. Then there are Ganesh Pyne, Sunil Das, KG Subramanyan, Bikash Bhattacharjee, and Jogen Choudhury. Among them, we have some of the best investments in contemporary art.
The next generation is that of equally popular artists who include the likes of Sanjay Bhattacharya, Paresh Maity and Debebrata De, who are young, prolific and original.
All of these artists command six figure prices.
But what about emerging artists? And what are their prices like?
A recent exhibition from Bengal of the students of De gives one a good example of the pricing and quality of the work of the really young.
While an artist such as Arun Bain, who has already sold a number of works to collectors abroad, and strongly reflects the influence of Jitish Kallat, has works like ?Microscopic View? (dealing with binary thinking, the computer culture and bio-technology), priced at Rs 19,000 and ?Cupid and Cupids? (based on the experience he had of the Gujarat massacre of how young minds naturally attracted to love can so easily be manipulated by the state machinery to hate) priced at Rs 35,000, it is the sculptures of young Chaitali Chanda, such as ?Mother and Child? (terracotta) at only Rs 4,000, a ?Mother? (bronze) at Rs 8,000, and two figure groups ?A Wall? (bronze with glass, at Rs 7,000 and ?Gossiping? (bronze) at Rs 6,000, are all bargains and ought to be picked up fast. Choitali, a sculptor of quality at a very young age, is definitely an artist to stock and study.
Another artist in this show who catches the eye is Manasjit Dutta, whose drawings ranging between Rs 2,500 and Rs 5,000 are worth a buy.
His sculpture ?Floating? at Rs 14,000 has already been sold. He is a young artist who is developing a magical realist style i bronze with considerable success.
But an artist who has not received any great exposure yet, SK Jamirul Rahman, whose works evoke the same subtlety as those of Ganesh Pyne, while they sell at a range of between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000, this young man of about 24 will definitely develop into one of our leading artists if he continues as seriously as he has begun. That is more easily said than done.
I would recommend the works of this young artist and the sculptures of Chaitali Chanda to collectors who are bold enough possibility of doing so.
I have been lucky in this respect with Neeraj Goswami, Subodh Gupta, Neeraj Bakshi, Atul Sinha, Manisha Parekh and a number of others. So I should not worry too much.
The price is low and the chances of success are high. All that is required of the buyer is courage.