India’s first creatively trained printmaker and pioneer of dry point etching in the country, Mukul Chandra Dey was born on 23 July 1895 in Sridharkhola, Bengal. He joined Santiniketan’s Brahmacharya Ashram school at the age of eleven and trained in art under the Tagore family stalwarts, becoming a close associate of Abanindranath Tagore. Learn More
Born in Bombay to eminent artist-couple Benode Behari and Leela Mukherjee, Mrinalini Mukherjee gave a new dimension to modern sculpture in India with works made in natural materials such as woven vegetable fibres of hemp. She studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. University, Baroda, under artist-teacher K. G. Subramanyan, receiving a post diploma in mural design. Learn More
An important artist of the Madras Group that synthesised modernism by melding Indian traditions with Western modernist techniques under the direction of K. C. S. Paniker, M. Suriyamoorthy’s visual language employed emphatic regional and folk imagery. Learn More
A. M. Mali was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, to a professional artist-father who painted mythological illustrations on the walls of local temples. Mali’s initial training in painting was under the well-known landscape artist Abalall Rahiman. Learn More
K. C. S. Paniker, a towering personality in the world of Indian modern art, is remembered most for spearheading the Madras Art Movement and founding the Cholamandal Artists’ Village on the outskirts of Madras in 1966. Learn More
Born into an aristocratic family of gold merchants, Kartick Chandra Pyne took an interest in art at an early age. The older cousin of Ganesh Pyne, another remarkable Indian modernist, K. C. Pyne graduated in fine arts from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, in 1955. Later, he taught at Calcutta’s Indian College of Arts and Draughtsmanship in the 1970s, and the Academy of Fine Arts in the ’80s. Learn More
Jeram Patel, who earned renown as an abstractionist, was among those artists who rebelled against modernistic approaches and altered the Indian art scene of the 1960s by formulating a new visual identity and method of abstraction. Learn More
Jaya Ganguly is known for turning the concept of aesthetics on its head while portraying social hypocrisies through her paintings. However, it’s not just the duplicity of the privileged vis-à-vis the have-nots that she seeks to express, but also the pretenses that the former keep up with in their comfortable yet orthodox existence. Learn More
One of India’s most loved artists, Jamini Roy is remembered for forging a unique Indian aesthetic for modern art by bringing together elements of traditional Bengali folk art and Kalighat patachitras, rendered in clean lines and earthy colours. Learn More
Born in Lahore in present-day Pakistan, Jagmohan Chopra is best remembered as a father figure in Indian printmaking who initiated an entire generation of artists into this genre of art. Learn More
One of the earliest pioneers of European modernism in Indian sculpture, Hiranmoy Roychaudhuri studied under E. B. Havell at the Government School of Art, Calcutta in 1905. He was also one of the earliest Indian artists to go to England to study art; he went to the Royal College of Art, London, in 1910 to train in sculpture. Learn More
Master printmaker Harendra Narayan Das, popularly known as Haren Das, was born in Dinajpur in present day Bangladesh on 1 February 1921. He took a diploma in fine art, with specialisation in graphic arts, from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, in 1938. He worked almost exclusively in printmaking at a time when oil painting ruled popular consciousness and prints were considered inferior. Learn More