Nature Morte is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by the New Delhi-based artist Samit Das. Continuing with his signature style of a hybrid mixture of painting, print-making, drawing, and collage, the exhibition is in honor of the 150th birth anniversary of the Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Himself a Bengali and a graduate of Santiniketan (the university established by Tagore and his associates), Samit Das has for many years been researching the architecture and interiors designed by Tagore himself (both for Santiniketan and his homes in Kolkata). Das has approached this archive of imagery as if a journey, mining and deciphering the clues found at an archeological site. Das combines the found photographic materials with his own handwork, creating works that are a synthesis of Tagore’s letters, poetry, painting, academic and social lives, and discovering relevancies between his architectural designs and contemporary practices in the field.

In addition, Samit Das’s unmanipulated photographs of Tagores’s architecture will be part of a large exhibition held at the Lalit Kala Akademie’s Rabindra Bhawan galleries in New Delhi from August 9th to 27th. Entitled “The Idea of Space and Rabindranath Tagore,” the exhibition will combine a wide variety of materials relating to Tagore, including some of his own art works, letters and ephemera. On display will be more than 100 of Das’s photographs of Tagore’s architecture and a major monograph on the subject, with a text by Samit Das, will be released afterwards to document the exhibition.

Samit Das was born in1970 in Jamshedpur, West Bengal. He holds BFA (1994) and MFA (1996) degrees in painting from the Khalbhavan, Visvabharati, Santiniketan and was a visiting fellow in the Book Arts Department of Camberwell College, London in 2000. His most recent solo exhibitions have been held at Gallery 88, Kolkata; Indigo Blue, Singapore; and Art Indus, New Delhi (all 2009), and the Anant Art Centre in Noida and Delaye Saltoun Gallery in London, both in 2008. He lives and works in New Delhi.