Modern Indian Art

Sarbari Roy was born in 1933 in Ulpur, (now Bangladesh). He graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata in 1956. He studied and trained under sculptors Prodosh Dasgupta and Sankho Chaudhuri at the M.S. University, Baroda. Between 1960 and 1962, he served as the Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Indian Art College, Kolkata. He appreciated Indian Classical music and his works were abstract in nature. It was a result of his travels to the Academia de Belle Arti, Florence, in 1962, where he met Giacometti and Henry Moore, who along with Sankho Chaudhuri had a strong influence on his style. His ingenious style is a combined blend of utmost realism, cubism and innovative abstraction. Roy Chowdhury has won several awards including the Gagan-Abani Puraskar from Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, in 2004, and the Abanindra Puraskar from the Government of West Bengal in 2005. He has exhibited his works at several group and solo shows, the most recent of which was a retrospective entitled ‘Sensibility Objectified – The Sculptures of Sarbari Roy Chowdhury’ in May 2009 in New Delhi. The idiosyncratic artist passed away in 2012.