Lalu Prasad Shaw

Born in Suri, Bengal, in 1937, Lalu Prasad Shaw obtained a diploma in painting from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, in 1959.

Despite training in Company School art, traditional Kalighat pats and Ajanta cave frescos, Shaw evolved his distinctive style to work in watercolours and oil. His teachers were some of the leading artists of the time, such as Gopal Ghose, Rathin Maitra, and Maniklal Banerjee.

In the 1970s, Shaw mastered the genre of graphics—initiated by the Society of Contemporary Artists—expressing it through the abstract form. Shaw experimented with the two-dimensional, geometric and non-figurative, as is evident in his lithographs.

Unlike his prints, Shaw’s paintings are charged with nostalgia and are object-specific. His brooding characters—men, women, and children—seem frozen into a kind of quiescent gesture; they are formal and speechless, but still expressive. Drawing from Mughal miniatures and adhering largely to profiles framed within borders along the edges, Shaw depicts faces of ordinary people, emphasising their physical characteristics. He has also experimented with landscapes, appearing to merge the urban and rural visual in styles ranging from the minimalist to cubist-inspired. His confident use of broad blocks of colours placed harmoniously is seen here too.

Shaw has exhibited extensively in India and abroad and his works form part of national and international collections. He has received prestigious awards like the West Bengal Lalit Kala Akademi award, the national award of the Lalit Kala Akademi, and the Birla Academy award. He lives and works in Kolkata.