Born on 26 March 1934 in the village of Valod, Gujarat, Haku Shah absorbed deeply the way of life, culture and beliefs of the pastoral and the folk, which he amply manifested in his works. This understanding also moulded him into a cultural anthropologist who brought global academic focus on tribal and folk arts and culture of India. Learn More
Born in Saurashtra, Gujarat, on 16 February 1937, painter, poet, art critic and historian Gulammohammed Sheikh has been a seminal presence on the modern Indian art scene for several decades now. Sheikh obtained a master’s degree in painting from M. S. University, Baroda, in 1961, and studied at the Royal College of Art, London, from 1963-69, on a Commonwealth scholarship. Learn More
Born in Uttar Pradesh in 1945, Gogi Saroj Pal studied art in Banasthali, Rajasthan, took a diploma at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Lucknow, and a postgraduate diploma in painting from the College of Art, New Delhi. Learn More
Devi Prasad Roy Chowdhury was born in Tajhat (in present day Bangladesh) in 15 June 15 1899. He learnt painting from Abanindranath Tagore, life drawing and portraiture from E. Boyess, and sculpting from Hiranmoy Roychoudhuri, with later training in Italy. Equally at ease with plaster and paint, he evolved his skills in bronze casting, and executed paintings that were an amalgam of the Chinese technique, the Japanese wash process, and his own scratching method, though his early paintings bore Tagore’s influence. Learn More
Born on 7 February 1904, in Behala, Bengal, Benode Behari Mukherjee joined Santiniketan in 1917, and Kala Bhavana in 1919, where he was one of the first students of Nandalal Bose. A congenitally impaired vision that denied him normal schooling and resulted in a lonely childhood, brought him close to nature and had a deep impact on his art. Learn More
Born in Bengal, Arup Das remains one of the most formidable muralists and painters of Indian modern art. He graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts Calcutta, in the 1940s. Later, in the 1960s, he became a member of All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi. Learn More
Born in Delhi in 1947, Amitava Das graduated from College of Art, New Delhi, in 1972. At the time, he was part of New Group and Artists’ Forum, and in the same decade won Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award. In 1989, he won a fellowship to study exhibition and graphic design in Germany. Learn More
Born in present-day Bangladesh, Amalnath Chakladhar belongs to that category of Bengali modernists who carved an identity uniquely their own, despite the overarching influence of the three prominent strains of modern art in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century—the Bengal School, academic training in art schools of Calcutta, and expressionism in Santiniketan. His contribution to furthering modernism in India, therefore, assumes importance for being a seminal, individual effort. Learn More
Belonging to the first generation of postcolonial Indian artists that sought cosmopolitan freedom in Paris and London during the 1950s and ’60s, Akbar Padamsee developed his images within the genres of portraiture and landscape as refracted through the prism of high modernism. Learn More
An artist who died with the brush in his hand like a true devotee of his profession, Abani Sen graduated from the Government School of Art, Calcutta, under Percy Brown. Learn More
Achutan Ramachandran Nair, popularly known as A. Ramachandran, was born in 1935 in Attingal, Kerala. He studied Malayalam literature before pursuing art at Kala Bhavana, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. Under the tutelage of Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij, he developed both the muralist’s monumentality of scale and the intimate ambit of the miniaturist. Learn More