Shambhu acharya’s solo exhibition: Art that carries years of legacy

Though the first thing you notice right after entering might be the colours, since they are vibrant, generous, full of life, but there is something more, the scent of something older might carry you away.

Not incense, not paint, but time.

Time cooked down into lines and pigment, and tradition passed through generations. At Galleri Kaya, the solo exhibition of Shambhu Acharya, a name well known in the world of patachitra, surrounds you with artworks that seem to make you forget you’re standing in a contemporary space and not a room pulled out of Bengal’s own memory.

Patachitra, literally meaning “cloth painting”, is a traditional art form rooted in folklore, mythology, and rural life. While many artists practice the form today, what makes Acharya’s work feel different is not just the technique but the reverence. Even calling him an artist feels slightly off, it’s like calling a monk a craftsman. The process, for him, seems almost like prayer, and that devotion translates into the emotion and storytelling of each work.

It’s in the way the colours are made from scratch, pigments ground from brick, seeds, stone, sometimes even riverbed soil. The thickening agent? Extracted from tamarind seeds. The brushes? Made of goat’s hair. “Some strokes in these paintings are not possible without these special brushes,” Acharya said simply.

Among the vibrant narratives of patachitra, a quieter form of storytelling stood apart, kushthichitra, the artist shifts into monochrome, abandoning the vivid palette for earthier, ink-based minimal tones.One visitor said, “The reason why I like patachitra is these are done using a technique which is our very own traditional technique, using all natural and handmade colours. Another intriguing thing about this exhibition waskushthichitra, I have never seen these artworks before.”

Drawn at the time of a child’s birth, especially in Hindu families, a kushthi records more than just name and lineage. It maps the planets, stars, and celestial alignments at the moment of arrival, a visual document of fate.”Just like we keep records of land or property, a kushthi is the document of a person’s life,” said Acharya. “It tells the story from birth to midlife to death, following the astrology we’ve had for generations.” If the newborn is a girl, she appears in the painting; if a boy, then he. The kushthi scroll, though visually simpler than the patachitra, carries a quiet weight, attempting to tell a life before it even unfolds.

Acharya belongs to a legacy more than 450 years old, making him the ninth generation in a family of traditional artists. He didn’t so much choose this path as he was born into it, long before he even learned to write the alphabets. As a child, he would drag leaves across walls and scratch bricks onto floors just to see the trace they left. The fascination with colour, its possibility and presence was always there.

That same respect for process runs through the entire exhibition, each on display paints vivid scenes from folklores, mythology and rural life, bride carried on a boat, women fetching water from river, two friends braiding each other’s hair, a flute player casting a glance toward a woman and many more.

One of the visitors, Abdullah Bin Amir summed it up, “I really liked the idea about doing artworks on our folktales. It’s rare to see. I personally like folklore and tales, and how the artist represented mythical characters in a traditional form, it was more than amazing. Not modernised, not abstract, just raw and true to the tradition”.

These days when art is often rushed, mordenised and soaked in factory made colours, Acharya’s work stands a part with his honesty, devotion and tradition it carries. Both his son and daughter are picking it up slowly, the strokes, the stories, the little rituals that shaped him. And maybe that’s what stays with you the most, not just that this art has lasted nine generations, but that it’s still alive, still breathing, and still being passed gently, hand to hand.