Paritosh Sen

A distinguished artist who established himself in the 1940's, Paritosh Sen left his home in Dhaka to pursue formal training in Madras, setting the foundation for a career that would play a defining role in modern Indian art. Until the 1940s, he worked primarily with Indian visual idioms, but reproductions of works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, and Gauguin - encountered during his teaching years at the Art College, Indore - ignited his exploration of form. In 1942, he co-founded the Calcutta Group and participated in its landmark exhibition, a pivotal moment in India’s early modernist movement.
Sen’s artistic vision expanded dramatically after his 1949 visit to Paris, where he encountered European modernism firsthand and even met Pablo Picasso. Returning to India in 1954, he developed a distinct narrative style rooted in everyday life. His deeply felt response to the socio-political unrest in West Bengal during the 1970s led to a series combining large canvases with papier-mâché sculpture, drawing on influences from Mexico, Egypt, and pop art’s graphic directness.
A prolific writer and illustrator, Sen contributed to major English and Bengali journals and authored a story published by the National Institute of Design in 1986. He received numerous honours, including France’s L’Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and the Lalit Kala Akademi’s Lalit Kala Ratna in 2004. Paritosh Sen passed away in Kolkata on 22 October 2008, leaving behind a legacy central to the evolution of Indian modernism.