The Bengali artist Gopal Ghosh called himself the "India Wanderer". An avid traveller and a lover of India's wild hinterlands throughout his life, the artist portrayed the country's natural beauty in his singular style. Born in Kolkata (then Calcutta) in 1913, he became particularly fascinated by the natural beauty of rural South India while studying at the Government College of Art and Craft, Madras (now Chennai).

As a student, Gopal Ghosh once caught the attention of C. Rajagopalachari — writer, lawyer, independence advocate, leader of the Indian National Congress, and later the only Indian Governor-General of India — while painting plein-air on the Marina beach. Rajagopalachari was so impressed by the young Ghosh's paintings that the veteran politician offered to arrange for his further studies abroad, however this never materialised because the college authorities did not permit Ghosh to travel abroad.

Trained in the style of the neo-Bengal School under India's early modernist masters such as Sailendranath Dey, Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose, and D. P. Roy Chowdhury, Ghosh also studied sculpture at the Maharaja School of Arts in Jaipur, Rajasthan.

In 1943, Ghosh returned to Kolkata after completing his education. This was a time of great tumult — the tide of World War II was finally turning for the Allies, a famine was raging in Bengal, and India's freedom movement had finally gained unstoppable momentum. The Calcutta Group, the first artistic movement of its kind in both Bengal and all of India, was founded against this volatile socio-political landscape. Though short-lived, the influential artists' collective marked an ideological shift from the romanticism and mythological preoccupations of the Bengal School, and ushered in the Modernist period of Indian Art. Ghosh became one of the eight original founding members of the Calcutta Group.

In her memoir 'Smritir Collage' (Collage of Memories), the Bengali artist Shanu Lahiri — the sister of Nirode Mazumdar, one of the other founding members — wrote:

"The beginning of the Calcutta Group is exceptionally bizarre. It is even difficult to make out how and in which ways it came into existence. Rathinbabu studied at the Government Art College with Subho Tagore. He used to visit Jorasanko Thakur Bari quite often. At that point of time, Gopal Ghosh was working with Kanwal Krishna at Cornwallis Street. As Rathinbabu used to visit that place, he was also familiar with him. (...)

From Calcutta Group, Gopal Ghosh was the person to organise the first solo exhibition at the house on S.R.Das Road. After that, they arranged a grand exhibition at the house of Jatin Mazumdar. He was a very enthusiastic person. Even his wife also provided ample help. By then, 1 Chowringhee Terrace had become a renowned place for painting exhibitions…"

During this period (1943-1953), Ghosh's work became increasingly political — like a visual catalogue of atrocities, revealing the pain and despair caused by man-made cruelties of war, famine, communal riots, and Partition. Both the Bengal famine of 1943 and the communal riots fuelled by Partition in 1947 found expression in his paintings from this time.

Dexterous in handling several media like watercolour, tempera, pen and ink, pastels, and even oil paints, Ghosh became a legend in his lifetime for reinterpreting the genre of Indian landscape painting, and went on to teach at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, from 1950 till 1972. He passed away on July 30, 1980.

Flower of Fire — a new exhibition based around DAG’s collection of the artist’s finished works, sketches and notebooks, and new archival research on his life — is on view at Alipore Museum till March 25, 2025. Learn more about the exhibition here.

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