Search results for: 'Bengal p'

The son of a mechanical draughtsman, Mondal took to drawing and painting at the age of twelve when he injured his knee and was confined to bed. The Bengal famine of 1943 and the Calcutta communal riots of 1946 deeply impacted his psyche; he joined the Communist Party and became an activist. Mondal’s final refuge was art as the ultimate weapon of protest. Learn More

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

Kshitindranath Majumdar, born on July 31, 1891, in Jagtai village of Murshidabad in West Bengal, is often referred to as a saint-artist who considered art as a form of devotion. Strongly influenced by Vaishnavism as propounded by the fifteenth century saint, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Majumdar trained in hymn singing, interpreted legends from Indian epics, and acted in productions of the theatre group owned by his father. Learn More

Khagen Roy hailed from Medinipur in present-day West Bengal and came to Calcutta to study art. However, he left the Government School of Art in Calcutta as well as the College of Arts and Crafts in Lucknow dissatisfied with their curriculum. A chance encounter with painter and sculptor D. P. Roy Chowdhury convinced him to join the Government College of Art and Craft, Madras. 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

The true pioneer of cubism in India and acclaimed for his satirical works of art, Gaganendranath Tagore was born on 17 September 1867. Along with his Nobel-laureate uncle Rabindranath Tagore, and brother Abanindranath Tagore, he was at the forefront of cultural revival in Bengal in the early twentieth century; the brothers established the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Calcutta, in 1907. Learn More

Born in Bengal in 1917, Bimal Dasgupta was raised by his uncle, a government employee posted in Delhi. His uncle’s family did not support his ambition of becoming an artist, so he joined Calcutta’s College of Arts and Crafts in 1937 with his father’s help. Learn More

Born in a middle-class Bengali family on 21 June 1940, Bikash Bhattacharjee gathered his visual and intellectual ideals from the politically charged atmosphere of Calcutta during his growing up years. Learn More

Bhabhesh Chandra Sanyal lived a unique life in the world of Indian art, witnessing the huge arc it cut across the twentieth century—he was born when the revivalist Bengal School was beginning to bloom, and by the time he passed away, modern Indian art had gone global and carved an international art market for itself. 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

Taking up art early, Anjolie Ela Menon had sold her first painting by the age of fifteen. Of mixed Bengali and American parentage, Menon was born in Burnpur in West Bengal in 1940. Learn More

Tracing the evolution of set design in Bengal, responding to the theatre archive at Natya Sodh Sansthan with scholar Trina Nileema Banerjee. 

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