The Realist group was formed in 1984 through a process of workshops, camps, intense discussions among artists friends basically trained at kala bhavan, santiniketan.This was in response to the moribund art educataion system prevailing in indian art institutions which offered to creative thinking and practice.We were also dissatisfied with the artistic practice of the time which was marked as high modernism and new ways were no where in sight. we used to meet at santiniketan during summer holidays and work together to create an IDEA of A GROUP. We had disagreements, fights, disillusionment initially and it took a few years before we decided to form the group in 1990.
Amit Mukhopadhyay
Realism in Art
(The European background)
Perhaps everyone would agree that it is not easy to define Realism. It is rather a simple term which got complicated by different interpretations given to the basic concept at various stages of time. One would like to adhere to Engels’s original definition of Realism, but at the same time try to seek avenues for the best use of it in today’s context, But before investigating into those possibilities, it is necessary to set the historical overview to the problem especially in the European art context, from where the movement began.
When did Realism begin? Champfleury, the writer-friend of Courbet attributed the beginning of the movement of Realism to Courbet, why? Wasn’t Greek art which brought into its scope to bring down gods to human level, Realism? Renaissance art depicted the poor and underprivileged, can it not be regarded as Realism? We notice that in the Nineteenth century England (beginning from 1840s) a sub-stream of paintings depicting the poor and various social problems were depicted almost consistently, can we not call it Realism? It is true that realistic elements can be traced in these paintings but still it was not Realism because Greek art. presupposed the existence of mythology and a mythological attitude toward nature. What the Greek society anticipated and needed from the artists is a liberation from the mythological modes of thought and secondly, the primitive character of the Greek society could only create naturalism, Realism was not possible within that societal system.
The poor and the dispossessed which were introduced in the paintings from Renaissance on wards were mostly incidental figures brought in to heighten the religious and moral effect or simply as decorative elements. There was no integrated understanding and approach to social problems as such. Realism still did not emerge as a genre painting, neither the artists were tied to a common programme which could give coherence’ in their approach to the problems, in their treatment of the subjects, in their styles.
Courbet and Realism
Realism which began with Courbet was a democratic aspiration around 1848. Before 1848 be painted Romantic subjects. And the Romantic painters before him presented an ‘autonomous world, the picture of the unreal, ideal existence, that did not need to be brought in any direct relationship to the life of the present and the life of every day’. Courbet and Realism was the direct antithesis to this, Courbet fought for a new type of man and a new order. In a letter of 1851 Courbet declared:
I am not only a socialist, but also a democrat and Republican, in a word, a partisan of revolution and above all, a Realist, that is, the sincere friend of the real truth.
The choice of-subject matter was the central point in the_realist doctrine, and the lower classes were the most important factor through which the underlying social mechanism could be revealed. From 1840 onward there arose a taste for the people, as if in anticipation of the coming struggles. The sentimental attitude to folk art and tradition created by the Romantics gave way to a conscious, vigorous and scientific attitude which helped Champfleury, Max Buchon, Dupont to unite the folk and Realism into a Common programme. Courbet’s personality, strong and tenacious like a peasant, (The precise opposite of the dandy of the thirties and forties), his political radicalism, his relations with Prudhon and his part in the commune took him close to the people. He himself affirmed that his art was in essence democratic, which was possible due to his materialistic outlook. Max Raphael correctly says:
…..set himself the task of treating his colours in such a way as to reproduce the full materiality of the objects represented (stones, water etc.), and to show how a number of different materials might be interrelated through their common character.
As a means of education and study, Courbet had never anything but-his magnificent eyes. In fact, one of his favourite axioms was that anything which does not appear upon the retina is outside the domain of painting. In his own words:
….that painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language ….an object which is abstract, not visible, not existent, is not within the realm of painting.
Imagination in ‘art consists in knowing how to find the most complete expression of an existing thing, but never in inventing or creating the thing itself.
Courbet’s materialism clearly separates him from the Romantics, Classicists and the Naturalists, however close they may have come to nature. All the three schools, including the Realists had one common point of departure: nature as the basis of art. In fact their boundaries seem to be quite fluid.
Any attempt to differentiate between the four phases, especially between Naturalism and Realism may lead to a terrible disaster. Classicism sought to correct nature through studies from antiquity or from the masterpieces of Renaissance. In order to purify nature and reality, it in fact deformed or weakened it. The Romantics though not afraid of nature and reality, never sought to alter it, they wanted to assert individualism through totally free interpretation of nature. Naturalism is an artistic style, it tends to exclude the individual, if helps to study matter and life as a surface detail in a style of the kind of a Camera obscura. But the main difference is that Realism is a philosophical attitude which embraces all of man’s existence., that comes within the scope of the artist. Realism does not simply mean depiction of things as they are seen but as they are. Sidney Finkelstein made the classic distinction between Naturalism and Realism. Looking at the same phenomena, the setting sun, the Naturalist exclaims:
“See, the sun revolves around the earth” the Realist replies., “No, the earth revolves around the sun”
To my mind, Naturalism in order to be close with nature and reality,reduced life to a mere transformation of the techniques of representation. They were basically idealists and they never sought to express the conscience of their age, their century, their people. There exist an antagonism between Classicism, Romanticism, Naturalism and Realism which can be determined by social facts and hence they are historically inevitable. Realism can not be born in all ages, in all societies and at every time by the simple whim of everyone or anyone. It is a specific and concrete socio-political and artistic movement consciously undertaken to express the democratic spirit of the age, of the society and people. Realism is a historical truth. Originally Realism was a pre-Marxian phenomena and had in its scope included both social and political subjects which was highlighted by radically different uses of technique, imagery and styles. It is an eminently nineteenth century phenomena of Europe but have emerged as a movement in other countries of the world which are still in the pre-socialist stage.
The Burial at Omans
The jury of the Universal Exposition of 1855 rejected two entries of Courbet, Burial at Omans and the Artist’s Studio on the ground that the works were in the Realist mode. An angry Courbet decided to have his own show in competion with the OfficialInternational Exhibition. The poster read like this. ‘REALISM. G. Courbet. Exhibition of Forty Paintings of his work’. According to some critics Courbet’s friend and contemporary Realist writer Chempfleury gave a coherent form to Courbet’s ideas in the introduction to the catalogue of the private exhibition. The introduction is regarded as the Realist Manifesto. (Appendix-L)
The Burial was painted in 1850 in Courbet’s native town of Ornans where the local people posed for him. The scene of a village funeral is taken up as an important historical event. We do not know who is buried. But it represents the funerals of all small towns. It is this triviality which shocked the critics. The disappearance of the grand subject guaranteed the truth of the picture, and the objectivity of the representation. Realism meant a liberation from the rhetoric, from the traditional idealizing subject or of personages, Courbet rejected the dramatic. The greatest achievement of Realism was ‘the acceptance of the trivial, banal, material and the refusal to ennoble it, idealize it, or even make it picturesque.’ The Realists attempt was to make a monumental work out of the material of daily life. The preference of the ugly, the banal and the trivial needed to be depicted in an un distorted and unromanticized way, hence, the aesthetics of Realism focused on both the objects represented and the manner of representation. Characters and situations were aggressively represented through the aggressive use of the point. To correlate the hard reality, colour was implemented through a palette knife rather than a brush. No fancy, no dream, no flight from the fact and personages. The frenzy of the Real raised a genre scene.
Engels, Van Gogh and Realism
Engels gave his classic definition of Realism in a letter addressed to Margaret Harkness critisizing her book ‘A City Girl’ (1857). In the letter of 1888 he wrote:
…..Realism to my mind, implies, besides truth of detail, the truthful reproduction oftypical characters under typical circumstances.
A pair of Shoes
Engels was perhaps pointing to the fact that the prime concern of the artist must be his truthfulness to reality, to probe beneath surfaces, to expose the social meanings of life,Poverty, Exploitation, War, all these certainly come within the scope of Realism. But what about a landscape or a flower? Or love? Surely, they also come within the scope of Realism, which will largely depend upon the techniques and methods (obviously materialistic in nature) and its application leading to a style or form of Realism, the classic examples are Van Gogh’s Sorrow(1882), The Potato Eaters (1885) and A Pair of Shoes (1888).
Van Gogh’s intention was to document the hard way of life. But be never explicitelywanted to make it a painting of social protest or an expression of class struggle. Van Goghsh was not cast in the shoes of Courbet but he was more a follower of Millet,both were simple, hard-working as an artist, they had no political goal as such, relied more on a simple, unpretentious life of a peasant or a worker without caring for any financial reward or the approval of the authorities.
Van Gogh’s touching still life A Pair of Shoes shows how closely he identified with the lives of the working class men which he symbolized through the battered Pair of boots. However, some Marxist critics of the twentieth century found his works closer to Realism. Julies Meier-Graefe wrote in 1906 that:
…..some of his ideas were from the beginning determined by a thoroughgoing socialism.
The Dutch socialist Pieter Troelstra visited the Van Gogh exhibition of Amsterdam in 1905 and his feelings as recorded by his son:
….. the deep compassion and the protest that spoke from those workers convinced of the burning seriousness of the revolutionary, who, in order to be true to his calling, could not follow in the path trodden by others but had to break new grounds …..
Some of Van Gogh’s works (especially the Potato Eaters) immediately link it to Engels’s concept of Realism. The artist is truthful to reality, is presenting truthful reproduction of typical characters under typical circumstances. In fact, Van Gogh’s sympathy for the working class has never been in doubt. His works definitely fall under the category of Realism, but unlike Courbet he neither grew with a political movement nor he had arty political goals to achieve. His paintings do not offer solutions to the problems he depicted.
We may recall here Engels’s criticism of the three books ‘A City Girl’, ‘The old Ones and the New’ and ‘Franz von Sickingen’ (See his letters to Margaret Harkness (1888), Mina Kautsky (1885) and Ferdinand Lassalle (1859). Engels accepted their works as Realism but yet wished for a definite solution-based works of art which were missing. However he acknowledged the reasons (historical inevitability) for such an absence of socialist types of art which are:
- The condition in which the artist or writer could take the side of the proletariat or to show the emancipation of the working class or to depict the class struggle artistically was still absent at the time, Le, in the nineteenth century Europe.
- The artists mostly came from the bourgeois class and tradition to which they were tied.
- The creative pieces were mostly addressed to the bourgeois circle, a class not directly an ally of the proletariat and hence not ready to accept socialist works of art.
So, in a situation when overtly political/tendentitious works of art is not possible to create, when majority of artists belong to the bourgeois class and when works of art is primarily addressed to a bourgeois circle which in turn is not ready to accept socialist works, we have no other option but to accept the form of passive Realism in art which undoubtedly is social in character and should be accepted as Progressive Realism.
THE REALISTS
(A Way Of Seeing)
Every phenomenon in art is both an answer to the questions posed by time and a new question posed by art to its own time. The existence of a peculiar dualism in a half-feudalistic and half-capitalist culture, results in the creation of several antagonistic and multi-directional art forms. From nineteenth century onward India has witnessed the rise and growth of many such art forms which almost existed simultaneously or followed one after the other. These variations, disparities of art form are the product of one and the same society, and though it baffles us, it is all a historical reality. No’ history is an unlimited movement onward and upward in line and ideals, if there is a logic and method in history, there are also trends to pull back the force and movement of history from achieving it ideals, there is also freedom to dislocate all methodological logic. Every art from in a particular century/epoch has its special qualities,
it lives and realizes the entire sum of its possibilities within the era/epoch to its maximum limit and when all the possibilities of expression representing the society, the people is exhausted it dies its natural death. Initially the group faced many difficult problems vis-a-vis its position- in contemporary Indian art. Among these, two important problems were:
- The heavy weight of Indian tradition, the folk and especially the ideas of Havell, Abanindranath and others, which is neither easy to reject nor easy to update in the context of the changed situation of the 1990′ s.
- The imitation and copying attitude from the western tradition which is essentially bourgeois.
We realized that neither of those traditions were sufficient enough to reveal the whole gamut of social reality, of the problems which we are facing today. Our objective is to combine the social conscience with a documentary interest in a faithful though not necessarily through an accurate recording of characters and events that take place everyday. Realism in art does not mean
- simply to represent things naturalistically, it depicts the lowly and the commonplace, the ugly and the trivial correcting the historical bias. Social realism does both in relation to modem social problems, but it leads art towards the grand and the spectacular.
The realists have deliberately chosen the path of realism. Our attempt is not just adopting and including new types of subject matter, it is the new attitude of the mind which is important. Subjects can range from poverty, war and peace, unemployment, riot, protecting democratic rights and even an intricate love relationship. Chernyshevsky’s materialistic aesthetic becomes relevant here.
Art does not limit itself only to the beautiful ……it embraces the whole of reality the context of art is the social aspect of life.
We are definitely proposing a concept of art which is real, which reflects and reshapes the reality of life. The relation between the artist and the society is a dialectical one. The dialectics of life as seen and discovered by the artists may not be the same, but the artists do understand that dialectical materialism is not a different way of seeing reality physically. We would agree with Sidney Finkelstein who said:
It is a way of seeing reality with the understanding that all phenomena we see have connections to all other phenomena, that what we see is not static but a stage in a continuous process of growth or change or development.
It is a way of seeing that gives a collective shape in comprehending reality, it is a collective attitude of the mind which is even ready to give up the so called personal style in favour of a group style. That is why we as a group have attempted at huge scroll paintings, woodcut and linocut folios based on common themes. This effort is also a process of learning the truths of life, of sharing and understanding each others stylistic traits and habits. At the same time it is a process of unlearning the academic way of looking at things, depicting them in a standardized routine formula in terms of techniques and mediums. The group believes more in the consistency of attitudes rather than depend upon individualistic stylized idioms which is normally regarded as the artists own style.
We admit that the concept of style is very complex. A style can mean the specific organization of a form, it could mean something deeper and beyond that specific form and finally that all styles grow directly from the society which produces art. There is also a concept of individual style, national style, regional style or epochal style.
But can there really be a national style such as American style, or a regional style like Florida style? It is true that an artists particular style can be referred to as the artist’s own style but that too in the context of prevailing styles of other artists of that particular period. Actually, the concept of style transcends the individual and is not exclusively determined by regional or national qualities, although some styles may prevail during a certain period in a region or a country. A style is a combination of elements, themes or motifs, forms and techniques. Themes makeup content of style and each style has its favorite themes.
The exhibits here show a variety of themes expressing the particularity of the people’s life,their pleasures and pains, their concerns and problems, their longings and their dreams. The exhibits also focus on a variety of approaches to reality, with varying degrees of success, though stylistically they mirror the collective tendencies of the group.
Sumantra’s Homage to Safdar completely abandons naturalism. Thematically it is a conceptualization from reality and stylistically he uses symbols, expressionist devices which in Sumantra’s usage is also realist. Symbols are used here not to express a personal vision, but the elements are only converted as an expressive medium. The painting stretched to six panels uses the narrative elements of a mural. It is a visualization of conceptualized events happening within a.definite time-space frame which in turn is transformed into reality when it is actually performed. And that was the.occasion when it was painted .i.e, on the first death anniversary of Safdar Hasmi.
Suranjan’s painting Collective labour is a realistic theme executed in naturalistic devices. Naturalistic details have been introduced to emphasize movement in space, perspective distortions have been used to heighten compositional unity and character. The Supervisor who watches the workers with hands in his pockets takes an arrogant posture and the buildings, a potent symbol of money and power serves as a direct antitheses to the workers cause in general. Naturalistic details help us to identify the workers from the rest of the objects/figures and once this recognizability is achieved they become real, especially through the extreme emotive force of the two working men almost turning their faces to the audience with the message of helplessness/sorrow contradicted by anger and hatred. The painting is a powerful expression of the oppressed labor.
The profound simplicity of Pinaki’s etching Mother and Child savagely delink us from the interplay of naturalistic details with realistic themes of Suranjan. The locale of the picture can be placed anywhere in Africa or Latin America. The departure from the naturalistic details sets the picture apparently in an emotionless frame. It is the representation of the stark reality of Africa people’s struggle for freedom from the racist, colonial power. The beauty of the work is its superb draftsmanship and excellent distribution of forms, the essence of which is to reveal the dialectics of love and hate, of war and peace and of life and death. Cool and calculated division of space, almost a geometrical construction built up on the left hand side of the picture, transmit a mood of coldness via death but the human plane on the right side exposes an universal feeling of love, compassion and life almost negating the death aspect shown on the left hand side of the picture.
Riot, a painting by Nirmal presents us with a phenomena manifested in our society, an evil and terrifying aspect of religion which kills the basic fabric of our social life. The thick bush not only separates the Temple and the Mosque symbolically, but it also acts like an envelope as if a beautifully designed curtain is spread over the underlying darkness, it is the darkness of our soul, of our society. The conflict of religious values is further heightened by depicting the dead body lying in the paddy field. It is a superb effort to arouse the emotional response from the audience. Interestingly it is again a conceptualization of reality which the artist witnessed and experienced in 1984. The point of reference is not the locale, not even the actual characters, but on the social problem, on the social divide based on religious fanaticism.
Pulak is not interested in a predetermined theme. He works on a particular surrounding, watching and observing the characters, their work pattern, their habits etc. And what emerges
Riot
out of that is the connections which are not static, but it follows some inner dialectical logic and movement. Within the movement he places himself simultaneously as the hero or anti-hero. In Alienation, the man sitting with a glass of tea before him is none other than the artist himself. Caught in the network of activity around him, he takes great pleasure in watching people work but at the same time he has retreated into himself as if undergoing the moment of analysis and self-criticism- that he is never a part of the active moment, or otherwise he is a non-participant to the larger societal movement which goes on eternally. Could be become one among those or could he not, that seems to be the question, the viewer may ask himself also.
Black and white II
Dhoban The Babu with his Dog
The Underworld Scene
Sushanto’s graphics belong to the genre of hard and precise realism. Meticulously materialistic in approach to his subjects and also in his handling of the medium, his works embraces the lowly, the trivial and the ugly side of life. He draws upon the street images without either vulgarizing or romanticizing it. In Black and White-II, the interior of a room is perfectly drawn, the characters faithfully portrayed. It is this faithfulness which makes his works convincing.
Ramprasad, Sukanya, Prabir and Rati’s works are restricted to the particular, each one defining his immediate environment truthfully. Ramprasad depicts the life of the tribals of Andaman and Nicobar Islands where he lives now. Rati introduces the professional characters like Chaiwala, Dhoban etc. to bring out the element of pathos. Tragic element is also represented by Ramprasad in his linocut Death of a tribal. Minimum actions, introvert and unstable poses with simple bold lines express the tragic event. Bold burning flames highlight the incident. Rati, on the other hand, with the help of naturalistic details depicts the sad plight of people belonging to lowly professions with great love and sympathy.
Prabir and Sukanya excel in minute observation and introduce a fresh element in their work, the element of humor and satire. Though not fully explored, their works do have the potential of an explosive power. In The Babu with his dog Prabir brings in the element of humor through minimum proportionate distortion of the Babu and the dog. The man of the street watches the absurdity of the situation from a distance with a mild disdain. In The Underworld Scene Sukanya delineates through parallel hatching of the lines which creates the textural The distortions highlight the vulgarity of those who delight in such banal operations. Sukanya uses the materialistic technique to make the characters look real. The conduct of the characters: their facial and body features are deliberately exaggerated to satire.
These exhibits will perhaps validate the point that the expression of reality is our key concern. We obviously differ in interest, taste and background which provide us with a chance to see life in a varied way, we include the varied impulses of life and depict them through our own choices of techniques, materials and’ stylistic methods. But the uniformity lies in our way of seeing, in the consistency of our attitudes. It is this factor which encouraged us to name the group as the Realists directly borrowing the name from the first realist manifesto.
The Child by Nitai Mazumdar
Generally speaking we embrace the whole tradition of realism but considering the peculiar Indian situation we feel more at home with our realist modes and the movement which started with Jainul Abedin, Chittaprasad, Somenath Hore and Ramkinkar Baiz during the tumultuous 40′ s of this century. Unfortunately this tradition of realism is yet to get its due place in Indian art history. We sincerely want to explore the possibilities of the tradition and hope to update it in the present day context. We are aware that all the works which are presented here may not be equally convincing, that like it happened in history we may remain a minority, but we are hopeful that these works will definitely pose a question to our time.
Amit Mukherjee
January 30,1990,
Calcutta.,
THE REALISTS (A Way of Seeing)
First Published, January 1990
Published by Sujata Mukherjee,
United Church, Benachiti, Durgapur-13, West Bengal
© Suiata Mukherjee
Cover: Collective Labour. Suranjan Basu
Alienation. Pulak Dutta
Mother and Child Pinaki Barua
Appendix 1
The Realist Manifesto
The title of Realist was thrust upon me just as the title of Romantic was imposed upon the men of 1830. Title have never given a true idea of things, if it were otherwise the works would be unnecessary.
Without expanding on the greater or lesser accuracy of name, which nobody, I should hope, can really be expected to understand, I will limit myself to a few words of elucidation in order to cut short the misunderstandings.
I have studied, outside of any system and without any prejudice, the art of the ancients and the art of the modems. I no more wanted to imitate the one than to copy the other, nor furthermore, was it my intention to attain the trivial goal of art for art’s sake. No! I simply wanted to draw forth from a complete acquaintance with tradition, the reasoned and independent consciousness of my own individuality.
To know in order to be able to create, that was my idea. To be in a position to translate the customs, the ideas, the appearance of my epoch, according to my own estimation, to be not only a painter, but a man as well, in short, to create living art-this is my goal.
From: Linda Nochlin’s Realism and Tradition 1848-1900, U.s.A, 1966
References
Linda Nochlin – Realism and Tradition 1848-1900, U.S.A, 1966 (Sources and Documents)
Amold Hauser – The Social History of Art, London, 1972
Max Raphael- Prudhon, Marx and Picasso, U.s.A, 1980
Mayer Saphiro – ‘Courbet and Popular Imagery’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, New York, iv, 1940-41
Leonard Baskin – ‘Some Notes on Style and Reality’, New Foundations, 1 iv, Summer, 1948
Maynard Solomon (Edited) – Marxism and Art, London, 1979
Jules Meir – Graefs essay in Van Gogh in Perspective, by Bogomila Welsh Ovcharov,U.s.A, 1974
Julian Treuherg – Hard Times, U.K, 1987
Vaughan James – Soviet Socialist Realism, London, 1973
Nicos Hadjinicolau – Art History and Class struggle, London, 1973
Marx and Engels – On literature and Art, Moscow, 1978
Luncharasky – State and literature, Moscow, 1967
Rabindranath Tagore – ‘Art and Tradition’ in On Art and Aesthetics, 1926
Sudhi Pradhan – Marxist Cultural Movement in India, Vol-Il, Yol-III,1982 and 1985.
Bio Data
SUKANYA BANERJEE
Born-1967. West Bengal.
B.Fine-in Painting Visva Bharati, 1988.
Studying M.Fine, in Painting Visva Bharati.
Present Address-Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati.
Santiniketan-731235
RATI BASU
Born-1957. Delhi.
B.Fine-in Painting, 1980 M.S. University, Baroda.
M.Fine – in Printmaking, 1982, M.S. University, Baroda.
Teaching in Patha-Bhavana, Visva Bharati.
Present Address -Dakshin Palli,
Santiniketan-731235.
SURANJAN BASU
Born-1957. Santiniketan.
Fine-in Print-making, 1980, Visva Bharati.
Post Diploma-in Print-making, 1982, M.S. University. Baroda.
Working independently at Santiniketan.
Present Address – Dakshin Palli,
Santiniketan-731235.
SUSHANTA GUHA
Born-1957 Gaya.
Post Diploma-in Print-making, 1982, Visva Bharati.
Teaching in Birla Vidya Niketan, New Delhi.
Present Address-402, Santnagar, 2nd, Floor, East of Kailash
New Delhi 11 0065
PULAK DUTTA
Born-1957 Bolpur.
B.Fine-in Print-making,1980, Visva Bharati.
Teaching in Patha-Bhavana, Visva Bharati.
Present Address-25,Nichu-banqla,
Santiniketan-731235.
SUMANTRA SENGUPTA
Born-1958.
Diploma-in Painting, 1980, Government College of Art and Crafts, Calcutta.
Post-diploma-in Painting, 1983, Visva Bharati.
Working with television, theater etc. at New Delhi.
Present Address-(STUDIO) K-30, Hauz Khas
New Delhi-100016
RAMPRASAD BHA TTACHARYA
Born-1956, Andamans.
B.Fine-in Print-making,1980, Visva Bharti.MA – in Painting, 983, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta.
Teaching under Directorate of Education, Andamans Admistration.
Present Address -Shankar General Stores, Golghar,
Port Blair- 744101.
NITAI MAZUMDAR
Born-1956. Calcutta.
B.Fine-in Painting, Delhi College of Art, New Delhi.
M.Fine-in Printmaking, Visva Bharati. 1983
Teaching in College of Art, Trivandrum. Present Address-Rat-313, Prasant Nagar, West Fort,
Trivandrum-695023.
PINAKI BARUA
Born-1954. Calcutta.
M.Fine-in Print-making, 1980, Visva Bharati.
Teaching in Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta.
Present Address- P.40, Garia Park,
Calcutta-700084.
NIRMALENDU DAS
Born-1951. West Bengal.
B.Fine-in Printmaking, 1973, Visva Bharati.
M.Fine-in Printmaking, 1975, M.S. University, Baroda.
Ph.D.-Visva Bharati, 1984.
Teaching in Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati.
Present Address-Kala Bhavana,
Santiniketan-731235.
PRABIR KUMAR BISWAS
Born-1948. Jalpaiguri.
B.Fine-in Painting, 1972, Visva Bharati.
Craft Designers’ Training Course-1974,All India Handicrafts Board,New Delhi.
Teaching in Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati.
Present Address-Kala Bhavana,
Santiniketan-731235.
Many friends from other discipline are also associated with us. We would like to mention a few names, they are Sugato Hazra, Debu Dutta and Indrani Barua.
