The Bengal School of Art, commonly referred as Bengal School, was an art movement and a style of Indian painting that originated in Bengal, primarily Calcutta and Shantiniketan, and flourished throughout the Indian subcontinent, during the British Raj in the early 20th century. Also known as 'Indian style of painting' in its early days, it was associated with Indian nationalism (swadeshi) and led by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), and was also being promoted and supported by British arts administrators like E. B. Havell, the principal of the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata from 1896; eventually it led to the development of the modern Indian painting.
Jamini Roy was an Indian painter. He was honoured by the Government of India the award of Padma Bhushan in 1954. He remains one of the most famous pupils of Abanindranath Tagore, another praised Indian artist and instructor. Roy's highly simplified, flattened-out style, and reminiscent of European modern art was influenced by the “bazaar” paintings sold at Indian temples as talismans.
Sayed Haider Raza was an Indian painter who lived and worked in France for most of his career. Born on 22 February 1922 in Kakkaiya, Central Provinces, British India, Raza moved to France in 1950, marrying the French artist Janine Mongillat in 1959. Following her death from cancer in 2002, Raza returned to India in 2010, where he would live until his death on 28 July 2016.
Jayasri Burman is a contemporary painter and sculptor from India. She is based in New Delhi, India. She studied at the Kala Bhavan in Shantiniketan from 1977 to 1979, and at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, where she completed a Master of Arts in Painting. She took a Graphic Art Workshop conducted by Paul Lingren and a formal course on Print making in Paris from Monsieur Ceizerzi. She is a member of an extended family of eminent artists: her husband is painter and sculptor Paresh Maity, painter and sculptor uncle Sakti Burman and son, photographer Rid Burman.
Ganesh Pyne was an Indian painter and draughtsman, born in Kolkata, West Bengal. Pyne is one of the most notable contemporary artists of the Bengal School of Art, who had also developed his own style of "poetic surrealism", fantasy and dark imagery, around the themes of Bengali folklore and mythology.
Chitra Ganesh is a visual artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Ganesh's work across media includes: charcoal drawings, digital collages, films, web projects, photographs, and wall murals. Ganesh draws from mythology, literature, and popular culture to reveal feminist and queer narratives from the past and to imagine new visions of the future.
Alpana or alpona is a Bengali folk art style, traditionally practiced by women, and consisting of colored motifs, patterns, and symbols that are painted on floors and walls with paints made from rice flour, on religious occasions. Alpona is common to Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal. Amongst Hindu families, alpanas may contain religious motifs with symbolic designs that relate to religious austerity, festivals, and specific deities. Amongst Santal tribal communities, alpanas often contain geometric or symbolic patterns drawn from nature. Although traditionally the domain of rural women, Alpana motifs have been very influential in modern Indian art, and are incorporated into the works of artists such as Jamini Roy, Abanindranath Tagore, Devi Prasad, and in the early illustrations of film-maker Satyajit Ray. In contemporary Bengal, alpanas are created as part of religious festivals such as the Durga puja, in public and private spaces.
Sunil Das was an Indian expressionist painter. He is known for the paintings in his Bull Series and his piece "Woman".
Gopal Ghose was an Indian painter from West Bengal. In 1943, he was one of the founders of the Calcutta Group, perhaps the first group of modernist painters in India.
Raman Siva Kumar, known as R. Siva Kumar, is an Indian contemporary art historian, art critic, and curator. His major research has been in the area of early Indian modernism with special focus on the Santiniketan School. He has written several important books, lectured widely on modern Indian art and contributed articles to prestigious international projects such as the Art Journal, Grove Art Online or The Dictionary of Art, Oxford University Press.
Ananta Mandal is an Indian artist. He has been recognized with international and national honours for his watercolour, oil, and acrylic paintings. He lives and works in Mumbai, India.
Shanu Lahiri was a painter and art educator who belonged to one of the most prominent and culturally elevated families of Kolkata and a first-generation modernist who emerged post independence. She was one of Kolkata's most prominent public artists, often dubbed as "the city's First Lady of Public Art", undertaking extensive graffiti art drives across Kolkata to beautify the city and hide aggressive political sloganeering. Her paintings are housed in the Salar Jung Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art.
Jangarh Singh Shyam (1962–2001) was a pioneering contemporary Indian artist credited with being the creator of a new school of Indian art called Jangarh Kalam. His work has been exhibited widely the world over including Bhopal, Delhi, Tokyo and New York. His most notable exhibitions include the Magiciens de la terre in Paris (1989) and Other Masters curated by Jyotindra Jain at the Crafts Museum, New Delhi (1998). His 1988 piece Landscape with Spider sold for $31,250 at Sotheby's, New York, in 2010—a first for an adivasi artist. Jangarh had also painted the interiors of the Legislative Assembly of Madhya Pradesh, the Vidhan Bhavan, and the dome of Bhopal's Bharat Bhavan—one of the most prestigious museums of tribal and contemporary Indian art. He was among the first Gond artists to use paper and canvas for his paintings, thereby inaugurating what is now known as Jangarh Kalam.
Johny ML is an Indian culture critic, art curator and writer based in New Delhi.
Vasundhara Tewari Broota is an Indian painter who does figurative paintings based on the perception of a woman and the psycho-political existence of the female body, traditional landscapes, still life with exquisite meaning. She worked on a cultural scholarship awarded by the Department of Culture, Government of India during 1982-84. She, Jatin Das and other 298 artists had donated art work for 2018 Kerala floods through an exhibition cum sale held in The National Gallery of Modern Art.
Jayashree Chakravarty is a Kolkata based Indian visual artist, working with painted canvases, and large-scale installations of paper with mixed media.
Experimenter is a contemporary art gallery co-founded by Priyanka and Prateek Raja in Kolkata. It represents several important artists in the contemporary art scene from across the globe. The gallery functions as an incubator for contemporary art practice spread across various disciplines and media.
Kisory Roy was an Indian painter and artist, known for depicting the landscapes and vistas of the Indian countryside along with portrait paintings.
Oindrilla Maity Surai is an Indian independent curator, art critic, and pedagogue based in Kolkata. She has curated exhibitions beyond the paradigms of the commercial gallery. Her major contributions lie in her converting the exhibition spaces as sites of resistances in the post-Covid 19 era, following the country's political conditions and experimenting with the anatomy of what may be termed as the biennale mode of exhibition making in the city's public sphere. She has also participated in several community- based art projects as an artist.
Sanat Kar was a prominent Indian painter and printmaker. He is one of the pioneers of modern Indian printmaking and is known for his experiments with wood intaglio.
