Style : The poignant imagery in Shyamal Dutta Ray’s paintings stem from his personal experiences and his canvases reflect his attempts to render the complex visual world around him. Most of Ray’s work reflects the city life of Calcutta, with its happiness and sorrow, struggle and strife, poverty and hope. The works also exhibit a sense of irony, surrealism and awareness of a disintegrating society.
About the Artist and his work :
Shyamal Dutta Ray (1934 – 2005) born in Ranchi, Bihar.
Education : He graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft in 1955.
Career : Dutta Ray worked as art teacher at Jagadbhandu Institution in Calcutta.
Art Career :
Regarded as a master watercolourist, Ray is also a founding member of the Society of Contemporary Artists, an artists’ collective, that sought to introduce innovativeness into the art world of the 1960s.
Shyamal Dutta Ray’s body of work constitutes a major turning point in the history of the Bengal school of art. Ray is credited with adding depth and intensity to the medium of watercolours, at a time when the Bengal school of Art traditionally used light and watery colours. His melancholic and pensive works reflect the contradictions of life around him.
Selected Group Exhibitions :
2014 – Indian Divine: Gods & Goddesses in 19th and 20th Century Modern Art, DAG Modern, New Delhi, India.
2012 – Manisfestions VIII- 20th certury Indian Art, DAG Modern, New Delhi, India.
2011 – Reprise – 2011, Aicon Gallery, New York, USA, Greenwich Village.
2010 – Figure/Landscape: Part Two, Aicon Gallery, London, UK, Mayfair.
2009 – Tracing TIme, Works on Paper, Bodhi Art, Mumbai – Kalaghoda, India, Kala Ghoda.
The artist passed away, but his work has continued to be posthumously exhibited. From 2006 to 2008, he was featured in two shows at Aicon Gallery, in New York.
Honours and Awards :
1958 – Gold Medal, Academy of Fine Art, Kolkata
1968 – Rabindra Bharati University Award, Kolkata
1968 – Founder Member, Group 8, Kolkata
1972,73,75,78 – Birla academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata
1982 – National Award, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi
1988 – Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
1988 – Awarded Shiromoni Puraskar.
Collections : His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Glenbarra Museum, Japan.
