Nirode Mazumdar

A founder member of the first modern Indian art grouping, the Calcutta Group founded in 1943, Nirode Mazumdar was born in Calcutta on 11 May 1916.

He came from a creative family as his elder brother, Kamal Kumar Mazumdar went on to be a noted Bengali writer, and his sister, Shanu Lahiri, achieved success as a painter and an educator.

Showing proclivity towards the arts early in life, Mazumdar enrolled at the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta at the age of thirteen, where he studied under KshitindranathMajumdar. Here, he also came in close contact with the Bengal school progenitor, Abanindranath Tagore. His early works bore a distinct stamp of the wash style of Bengal school but he gradually veered towards a more modern syntax, especially as a co-founder of the Calcutta Group.

Louvre. From this time onwards, his works started aligning with European modernism while being rooted in Indian art traditions at the same time. In Paris, he developed an especially fond relationship with the renowned Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

He returned from Paris in 1958, with his French wife Marguerite and children Oditi and Chittrovanu, and settled in Calcutta. From the late 1960s, he started exploring tantric themes and abstracted images of Hindu gods and goddesses in his work. Important series of works he created during this period include Shodasi Kala, Nityakala, Boitorini, The Final Spring, Sthirbhava, Abaraniya, and more. His memoir of his time in Paris, Punascha Parry, was serialized in the Bengali magazine Desh between 1979-82. It was published as a book a year after his passing away in September 1982.