Printmaking

Image above: Sudeshna Sengupta’s intaglio plate along with a color-viscosity print printed from this plate displayed at one of her solo exhibits in New Mexico, USA

The prints featured on this page represent Sudeshna Sengupta’s involvement with various printmaking processes since 1983. Her special area of expertise is the Intaglio-Simultaneous Surface Color-Viscosity method of printmaking, which enables the artist to create prints of a wide range of colors and textures from a single plate and requires only one run through the press. The unique tactile and expressive qualities achievable through this process are some its aspects that draw her to this medium.

The major portion of her print portfolio consists of intaglio prints (etching, drypoint, engraving, aquatint, and mezzotint) depicting a series of metaphorical images constructed around narrative patterns of thought and expression. The semi-figurative references often create a psychological juxtaposition of emotionally charged, intense forms which reflect her ongoing introspection on the contemporary human condition, with its existential, societal, and socio-political issues. Her Still/Life: Bhopal Genocide series came as a response after the infamous human tragedy that took place at a factory and its surrounding localitites in Bhopal, India — which was caused by the negligence of a US based giant multinational corporation. The imagery in “Skyline Fragmented” provides a metaphor of the fragmentation of lives in contemporary society – the pictorial space in this composition has been divided and separated into isolated compartments, breaking their relationship to each other in order to reveal a sense of psychological isolation.

Each of these limited edition, numbered prints is an original, and hand-pulled by the artist. The numbers at the lower left hand corner of each print indicate the total number of prints in that edition (the lower number) and identify the serial number of the particular print (the upper number).