Born in 1899 in the village of Verka near Amritsar, S. G. Thakar Singh showed early aptitude for the arts by drawing on the walls of his home with coal. With no formal training, he went on to excel in the academic style of painting, rendering stunning landscapes, portraits and still-lifes. He apprenticed under local artist Mohd. Alam and moved with him to Bombay when the latter found a job as a stage artist with a theatre company. Learn More
Born in Patiala, Punjab, in 1953, Ranbir Kaleka earned a diploma in painting from Punjab University’s College of Art in Chandigarh. He spent the next few years teaching at Punjab University and College of Art, New Delhi, before leaving for London on a Charles Wallace scholarship to study at Royal College of Art from 1985-87. He stayed on in London for several years and returned to India in the late 1990s. Learn More
Drawn to art through the pages of the Bengali art journal Prabasi, Paritosh Sen ran away from his home in Dacca (Dhaka), now in Bangladesh, to learn art in Madras. Learn More
Born in Amritsar on 23 February 1935, Paramjit Singh studied art at Delhi Polytechnic from where he completed a diploma in 1958. About a decade later, he went to Norway to study printmaking at Atelier Nord. Learn More
Well-known for his silkscreen prints, Paramjeet Singh was born and brought up in Jamshedpur in present-day Jharkhand where career prospects appeared limited to engineering or medicine. His parents hoped he would study architecture, but destiny had other plans as a friend took Singh to a local art class, which spurred his interest in drawing and painting. Learn More
Born in Shivpur Diyar in Ballia district of Uttar Pradesh, Muni Singh studied at College of Art, Lucknow. In 1963, he received formal training in fresco-making from Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. A contemporary of Badri Nath Arya, R. S. Bisht, and Sanat Chatterjee, Singh’s preferred medium was watercolour. He mastered the miniature style of painting—Mughal, Rajput, and Pahari—and translated it into his own idiom and technique. Learn More