Ajit Gupta (*1923 in India) came in 1958 to Europe, where he since 1967 until his death in of 2001 lived in Berlin. His art combines elementariness: silence is shown within motion, while strength and tenderness are just as opposite as knowing and feeling. Struggle and contemplation as well as love with its vulnerability are close to each other in Gupta’s artwork.
The richness of two cultures influenced his paintings, Ajit Gupta's roots are in the Indian culture are, while the Western culture shaped his later habitat. In the "Washing Technology", which the artist had drawn up, he found the appropriate way to capture fleeting imaginations permanently into his paintings. With this technique transparent colour layers are superimposed several times. Through a lengthy process of applying, washing off and re-applying the artwork of Ajit Gupta seems to breathe!
 
Influences of Joan Miro, Paul Klee and Marc Chagall are gladly to be seen in Gupta's artwork and certainly there has been some effect, nevertheless Ajit Gupta succeeded to create something completely unique, wherein the Asian wisdom, the Indian way of life and the European stylistic elements are existing in harmony. Despite explosions of colour and a rich, unprecedented colour palette his paintings perpetuating a certain tranquillity.
Gupta himself saw the climax of his artwork in a strictly constructed and calculated shape and colour, which abstracts the object in favour of poetry permeated inner world and thereby transfers it to another order.
 
The artist and friend Dieter Tyspe (1937-1994) characterized i.a. Gupta's work as follows: characters can be images. Images can be language. Language and characters are often hiding legends.... Ajit Gupta’s motifs, colours and thoughts include history and culture, childhood and experience, transitory, preserved and retrieved elements: Red equal passion, peacock and women and men and tigers; simple cross for luck....
 
The exhibition is a cross section of his artwork from 1963-2000 where his joy of experimentation with various stylistic devices and techniques (oil / acrylic, drawing, ink, watercolour (wash technique), gouache) can be enjoyed.


Note: On the 18th of September 2016, the day of Gupta’s death, at 6pm Mr. Arif Naqvi, an Indian lyricist, will read his own poems in Urdu and German, R.S.V.P.