A slow drip to a fluid movement that seems to swing through the beams of light, followed by a rapid flutter of feather-like strokes stirring through misty shadows. The trickle of red leaving a faint trail. The ink seems to lead of its own accord in contemplated minimalist deliberations, reflecting upon the space, the light, the existence and the inexplicable sensations coursing through the viewer. Is this a new language, an unscripted dialogue where the Artist and the Public feel connected to a freedom that is coursing through our very veins?

Over nearly seven decades, Hiran Mitra has been seeking this freedom. Exploring, questioning, breaking conventions of theory and practice. From unfettered vastness of rural Bengal to the dynamics of Urban spaces, Hiran keeps growing through his paintings, his writings and pursuit of the universal language of Art.

How we see the infinite night sky, feel the humid monsoon breeze, hear the thunderous rain or smell the damp red earth in Bengal, meanwhile losing our thoughts in the blackest black carbon of the hurricane oil lamps, have all mingled and penetrated in a textural painting. Hiran’s form and textural selection breaks the functionality of paint to capture this unique environment. Every leaf, stone and powdery soil takes the form of a memory on the canvas.

The representational narrative in Indian Art comes from a long tradition of story telling through Aesthetics. While Hiran’s many early paintings and lesser known but equally powerful figurative drawings have explored this narrative in his uncluttered and understated method, he prefers the energy and vocabulary of gestural expression that capture more of our real world. A lot remains to be analysed in Indian art and particularly in Abstraction, yet the aesthetic freedom on that horizon has been under-recognised for a long time until validated as esoteric art in a Eurocentric mode. Hiran has thankfully broken that mould.