HOMMAGE TO THE INDIAN MASTER SATISH GUPTA
By Astrid Narguet

How does the soul incarnate itself in art and irradiate it?
I had the honour of meeting Satish Gupta a few months ago at the exhibition of the Chinese artist-monk Dachan at the Indian Museum in Calcutta. It was a breathtaking meeting between two masters who recognized in each other a shared vision of art. The artist-monk Dachan has found in the universal language of the Indian artist the vehicle of Grand Art/Pure Art, which can change destiny, as art is a bulwark against the alienation of consciousness and spiritual indifference.

India and China share a common voyage through time, originating in intellectual and artistic exchanges since antiquity, dominated by a fait majeur: the spread of Buddhism from India all the way to Japan, via China.

The Oeuvre of Satish Gupta

Satish Gupta works with a wide range of artistic techniques and mediums; he is calligrapher, painter, poet, writer, sculptor, muralist, designer, ceramicist. He is influenced by the theory of the five elements, a recurring theme in his work: fire, water, metal, wood and earth. He carries us away in a flurry of colour, form, material, words, and brushstrokes, materializing timelessness in a flood of sensations; the splendour of the universe takes form and overwhelms us in an ecstasy outside of time and space.

Satish Gupta’s oeuvre, imbued with poetry, expresses the metamorphosis of the world and the animation of art to reproduce the process of nature, to modify it, to transform it, to balance the flow of universal energy. Indeed, if we bow before nature, and accept this dependence, we are paradoxically granted true self-control. Thanks to the dazzling radiance of these monumental sculptures of divinities, to the seemingly infinite dynamism intrinsic to his works, the essence of life is present. A silent and majestic momentum resonates and captures our entire beings.

The vital breath (Prana or Qi) permeates beings as well as things and to understand the deeper meaning of Satish Gupta’s work it is necessary to realize that this breath of life guides his paintbrush. The artist’s inner rhythm, without objective or end, releases the spark of life in a fusion of everything that has been, is, and will exist.

The use of ink in Satish Gupta’s works—a precious commodity of the East—becomes an almost supernatural process, it allows an ascetic conditioning which in turn leads to the spiritual illumination of each living being, to the purification of the soul and body.

His work follows pure Eastern tradition, one that is at the origin of a precious introspective methodology, a combination of meditation and empiricism entirely removed from the religious; an invaluable contribution to the shared foundation of human knowledge.

In a way, Satish Gupta’s painting is also indebted to Chinese iconographic tradition. Gupta invites us on a spatio-temporal journey, in which he stages elements taken from traditional landscapes, allowing us to understand how events transcend the notion of time. The soul of the art of painting emerges in the mountains and the water, the emptiness is its visage.

Water is the bringer of life, representing yin and yang, femininity and masculinity. Through the use of colour and material, one perceives a cascade between two rocks, waves breaking on the shore, or in the current of a river, mirroring the inner journey of every living being: a long initiation that the artist reflects in his painting with softness, voluptuousness, a sense of essentiality and humility.

Trees are also an important component in the work of the artist. A symbol of unity, trees are connected to the earth by their roots and to the heavens by their canopies, in a perfect balance of life. Through this “Tree of Life”, a fruit of ancient knowledge, the artist radiates a powerful causal influence; he opens up the inner paths of the living to provoke spiritual awakening.

Venerated since ancient times, the tree embodies the virtue of the wise and makes the connection between heaven and earth, dreams and reality, spirit and matter, consciousness and unconsciousness, visibility and invisibility. The tree symbolizes a fusion of the essence of being and nature, life and hope. Satish Gupta’s tree sculpture, whose sumptuous green foliage mixes with the coppery reflections of the birds that inhabit it, filters and captures light as if to better reveal it.

Satish Gupta’s brushstrokes dance on the canvas with extreme subtlety and voluptuousness, combining nuance and finesse, firmness and suppleness of touch, without any sign of hesitation. His artistic gesture is the liberation of a soul drunk on nature: the artist reveals this to viewers, allowing them to reach a form of enlightenment by turning their gaze toward their inner selves, like the chant of a mantra.

Satish Gupta’s artistic performances are often accompanied by music and dance, as though he wants to create the living garment of God in an evanescent and transcendent ritual. This is to quote only the calligraphic works the artist has produced for the many coastlines of the globe, from Madras to Fécamp, or “Wings of Eternity”— sculptures included in a performance at the Royal Opera House of Mumbai—which seem to fly, mimicking the artist’s paintbrush.

But, faced with the destruction of nature by man, the viewer will find anger is also expressed in the artist’s work, a primitive and destructive violence that reminds us of the need for change, of a new vision for humanity’s future.

The afterlife, earth and humanity: the artist translates the flow of the celestial rhythm between the mind, the body and the soul, to look at things and explore them, since everything is ultimately connected. Satish Gupta guides us thanks to his artistic intuition suffused with esoteric, yet simple and coherent predictions. Art becomes a fresco, like the breath of the world. The artist draws us into a world where the continuous metamorphosis of life seems to flutter like the wind.

The influence of Japanese culture on Satish Gupta’s work is significant, especially Japanese haiku, which is used to transcend the temporal restrictions of language and thus return to primordial unity, to the first line drawn that led to the invention of language.

Other artists in the course of history have been similarly inspired; Morandi by the Chinese Buddhist monk Mu-xi of the Song Dynasty, John Cage by Japanese Zen philosophy, and the Spanish artist Tapies, who found the culmination of his aesthetic research in Chinese calligraphy.

A representation of the universe is inside each one of us, and Satish Gupta’s creative impulse allows a taste of the infinite to resurface within ourselves.

(Translated by Arvind Raman)