Sakti Burman, a painter, sculptor and lithographer, was born in Kolkata in 1935. He joined a five-year course in fine arts at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, in 1951 and later went to study at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Inspired by Van Gogh and other leading artists of Europe, Sakti wanted to dedicate his life to art the way they had done. He said, “If I really wanted to make art my career, what I had learnt so far was not enough.”

His journey to become as successful an artist has been an uphill journey. Even though Sakti’s father was a patron of culture, he did not approve Burman’s preference to study art as a profession as he was worried about Sakti earning a living. But his brothers’ convinced their father to let him join art college. His attempt to sell his paintings in India did not prove as successful as they were already doing in France. When an American couple – Fernants came across his works, they wanted to sell it as graphic prints, which was a successful endeavour. After its successful run, they encouraged him to turn his works into lithography. Burman found it significant, as he found himself in the company of artists he had long admired – Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Georges Barque and Marc Chagall.

Sakti Burman fills his art with mythic and fantasy based content and rich colors. He uses pointillism and a marbling technique achieved by blending oils with acrylics to create fresco-like works on paper and canvas. Burman’s paintings often evoke a surrealist feel, referencing multiplicities of time and place. His art drew extensively from Hindu and European mythology, as well as from the artist’s own memories. Suggesting surrealism, his paintings are populated by humans, animals and cityscapes that are dreamlike in appearance. His defining oeuvre owes largely to his technique of marbling, which he arrived at after years of experimentation. Burman travelled to Italy in 1958 and his encounter with the frescoes of Giotto, Piero de la Francesca and Simone Martini inspired him to assimilate their monumentality and textures in his works.

Burman was awarded the Medaille d’Argent au Salon de Montmorency and the Prix des Etrangers, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1956.