Gopal Ghose: A Jubilant Quest for the Chromatic Sanjoy Kumar Mallik

Gopal Ghose (1913-1980), born in Shyambazar (Kolkata), spent his childhood and adolescence shifting between Simla, Benares and Allahabad. In 1931-35 he obtained his Diploma in Painting from the Maharaja School of Art & Craft, Jaipur, under guidance of Sailendranath Dey. Subsequently he enrolled at the Government School of Art, Madras, in 1936 under the tutelage of Deviprosad Roy Chowdhury. Beginning with a pictorial language that was inspired to a great extent by the Bengal School diction, his personal language transformed during the 1940s. His sketches of the infamous man-made famine of 1943 in Bengal and the paintings executed during his association with the collective Calcutta Group testify his shift to a more contextually relevant pictorial diction that was oriented towards a boisterous exploration of the chromatic. But the entire range of his oeuvre testify a more diverse formal quest that goes well beyond the celebratory. Published in association with National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, and Akar Prakar, the volume contains over 250 works by Gopal Ghose, tracing his artistic journey from the 1930s till 1980 when he passed away. The book also includes essays by Prodosh Dasgupta, Prasanta Daw, and Purnima Sinha, who all knew Gopal Ghose, offering varied perspectives to the reader.