If you search for any variation of “Gopesh Chandra Chakravarty painter” online, one of the few relevant results leads to a scanned copy of a moth-eaten catalogue of exhibits at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata, from December 1936 to 1937. The final entry on page 9 includes three paintings under the name CHAKRAVARTY, GOPESH CHANDRA: ‘188. Death, the light-bearer’, ‘189. Midday Fairy’, ‘190. Storm-bird’, priced at the princely sums of rupees 250, 50, and 25 respectively. They reveal nothing of the artist, almost hiding behind these figures. Who was he? Why did he almost disappear from the history of Indian art?

Gopesh Chandra Chakravarty (1905-1993) was born in 1905 in Surma/Barak Valley, in the Jayantia Hills district of Meghalaya, India. He left home in his early teens to pursue formal training as a painter at the Government School of Art in Calcutta, but had to drop out for lack of funds. During the following years, he was often homeless, sleeping on the streets around Wellington Square or College Street. “Subsequently, he learned to see and paint on his own, while becoming deeply influenced by the teachings of Ramakrishna Paramhansa,” according to art writer and researcher Ankan Kazi.

Chakravarty developed a visual language shaped equally by hardship, spiritual inquiry, and the shifting realities of a nation moving towards and beyond independence. His early works reveal a fascination with the subconscious and an inward, mystical sensibility, while later paintings confront the haunting reality of living through colonialism and the horrors of mass starvation and riots, rendered in strange, grotesque figurations. Figures dissolve into shadow, their contours blurred or warped, as if struggling to retain form amid historical upheaval. His engagement with illustration — particularly for literary works — infused his paintings with narrative and graphic intensity, blurring the line between fine art and popular visual culture. He lived through and responded to the Swadeshi movement of the early 1900s, the freedom struggle, and the communal riots of the 1940s. He continued to exhibit his work privately in Kolkata (Calcutta) and publicly in Shillong and Sylhet after the 1936-37 exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Working across various media, Chakravarty’s early works reflected the Bengal School’s watercolour wash technique popularised by artists such as Kshitindranath Mazumdar. But as his practice matured, Chakravarty shifted into commercial illustration, creating artwork for Russian and Eastern European literary classics. This phase honed his interest in mythic, allegorical, and fabular themes beneath the surface of modern history. In his later works, he used figuration and distortion to express political concerns, exploring social and cultural ruptures caused by authoritarian rule in South Asia. His work was influenced by Yahya Khan’s martial law in Pakistan and the 1971 civil war, which led to the birth of Bangladesh. Through his paintings, Chakravarty addressed the human and cultural toll of state violence, repression, and upheaval.

Chakravarty also played an active role in the network of post-Independence cultural organisations that emerged across Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal. These groups were united by a shared commitment to reimagining the modern individual and rebuilding cultural life in the wake of the political and social upheavals that had defined the preceding decade. And yet, Chakravarty was almost lost to time. Almost.

‘Stranger Forms’, presented by Bengaluru-based Dwija Gallery, places his paintings in two parts: ‘Fabular Worlds’, the first part, features his early works rooted in modernist formalism; while ‘Grotesque Realities’, the second part, focuses on his later works influenced by the horrors of the Partition and post-colonial histories of South Asian nation-states. Together, they reveal an artist who was at once introspective and socially alert, spiritual yet acutely aware of human frailty.

‘Stranger Forms: The Forgotten Art of G. C. Chakravarty’, the first major retrospective dedicated to the remarkable yet long-overlooked artist Gopesh Chakravarty (1905–1993), opens on the 16th of June, 2026 (Tuesday) at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture.

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