The Canvases of Pratap Deb

An exhibition by the Deb family at India Habitat Centre portrays the artist’s timeless art — a mix of modernism with subtle hints of Cubism

- Pankaj Jhajhria

During a trip to Shillong, Pratap Deb stopped at a roadside stall to buy sliced pineapple. There, he met an elderly woman selling fruits—an encounter that would later inspire one of his canvases. The portrait that emerged was, however, of a much younger lady—“perhaps fascinated by how she might have appeared years ago,” art curator Johnny ML writes in a short note accompanying Deb’s painting ‘Poised’ in the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre. “The woman gazes toward an unseen figure outside the pictorial frame, a trope often employed by modernists such as Raja Ravi Varma and Paul Gauguin.”