Arup Das
Arup Das Remains One of the Most Formidable Muralists and Painters of Indian Modern Art was born in West Bengal in 1924.
Das 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.
It was a British Council fellowship in 1972 that took Das to Europe, allowing him to gain exposure as an artist to the art movements and the work done by European masters. Many of his paintings, in fact, have the recurring theme of the messiah offering salvation and hope to people.
Like many of his contemporaries, Das was affected by the socio-political landscape of the nation in the 1940s and the subsequent changes in the ’50s. The struggles of people became a reason for the human figure occupying a central position in his paintings.
In Das’s art, man becomes a social and historical being, placed at the centre of the cultural environment. This makes Das’s art timeless, created from the perspective of the socio-cultural moorings that he indexes remarkably in his art.
The artist had several shows in India and abroad. He won the national award from the Lalit Kala Akademi in 1957 and the President’s silver plaque in 1957. His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Sahitya Kala Parishad, and All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, among others.
The artist had his first solo exhibition in 1954 in Kolkata, and has since exhibited widely across the world including at venues like the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Piccadilly Gallery, London; Galerie Doucet et Coutureau, Paris; Galleria Nuovo Sagittario, Milan; and Galerie Sagar, Zurich.
Burman has participated in several shows, some of the most recent including The Beholder’s Share by Jehangir Art Gallery and Art Musings in Mumbai in 2016; A Private Universe by Art Alive Gallery in New Delhi in 2015; Rituals and Reasons: Invoking the Sensual in Art, at Apparao Galleries in Chennai in 2014; The Wonder of it All, a retrospective exhibition by Pundole Art Gallery and Apparao Galleries in New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai in 2012, Archetype and Enraputured Gaze at Aicon Gallery in London and New York in 2009; Faces of Indian Art organised by Art Alive at the Visual Art Gallery, New Delhi; Understanding Oneness in Diversity at Kitab Mahal, Mumbai; An Evening in Paris …Rome…London at Gallery Sanskriti, Kolkata; and Resonance organised by Art Musings at Museum Gallery, Mumbai, all in 2007.
Burman was awarded the Medaille d’Argent au Salon de Montmorency and the Prix des Etrangers, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1956.
