ARTS ACRE IS an artists’ village on the Eastern edge of the city of Kolkata. When there is little traffic, it takes one hour of driving to reach it from the heart of old Kolkata.  The Acre (aka International Centre for Creativity and Cultural vision)  was founded in 1984 by the artist and cultural activist Shuvaprasanna Bhattacharjee (born 1947). The beautiful modernistic campus was designed by Partha Ranjan Das.

Today, the fifth of January 2025, we visited Arts Acre where several excellent exhibitions,  part of the 2024/25 Bengal Biennale, were being held.  One of these was a large show of paintings and other artworks by Shuvaprasanna. His wonderfully executed paintings reflect his interest in, and connection with, the politics of Bengal: he has been closely associated with the current Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee. One of the paintings depict her as being like the pied piper of Hamelin. The artist wrote of this painting that just as the pied piper attracted his followers with the music of his pipe, Mamata attracts her followers by “… the mesmerising music of her leadership.” This painting was placed next to two others that seemed to be critical of the Communist regime that ruled Bengal for many years before Mamata and her Tfollowers Congress party were voted into power.

Another picture relates to the visit to Arts Acre by the German author Günter Grass. Called “In search of Oscar”, the artist depicts Grass as Oscar in the novel “The Tin Drum”. The painting is supposed to evoke solidarity with the marginalised people in Kolkata.

Shuvaprasanna paints beautifully in ways that capture the ideas he is trying to convey in a highly accessible way, but without compromising artistic and aesthetic qualities.

It was worth spending an hour in a taxi to see Shuvaprasanna’s works and the art complex he established so many years ago.