Inscribed on this drawing is a telling story of a young ‘Satish Das’ who was orphaned when everyone in his ‘fisherman family’ died due to hunger as a result of the manmade Bengal famine that claimed millions of lives. The horror was documented for the People’s War, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party, by Chittaprosad, who travelled through the affected area on assignment. The eyes of this boy—sullen, defeated, lost—have the capacity to rip our hearts and move us to tears. It was one of the several works by Chittaprosad that have left a lasting legacy of the impact of the famine on the lives of people in eastern India.
published references
Mallik, Sanjoy Kumar, Chittaprosad: A Retrospective, 1915-1978 (New Delhi: DAG, 2011), p. 273 Singh, Kishore, ed., Masterpieces of Indian Modern Art: Edition II (New Delhi: DAG, 2017), p. 182
Chittaprosad
Satish Das
1944
Ink on paper
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Chittaprosad
Satish Das
1944
Ink on paper
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