Shanu Lahiri

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Shanu Lahiri entered her artistic career in the heady years of India's Independence. Breaking away from her initial academic training was crucial to making the new modernist art which infused the influence and inspirations of international art movements. It was fully in keeping with the period's main artistic trends that she moved from her training and in Paris she actively embraced the legacy of the French High Modern.

Embracing the vocabularies of contemporary European modernism as the key idioms of her practice, like many of her generation, Paris was the Mecca of Modernism-the artistic repertoires of Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Rousseau had remained cognizable reference points for her own innovations with form, colour and content-which left a lasting impact on her. From this rich, historical repertoire of art emerged her own trademark style which she was known for- a particular mode of contorted human figuration, a flourish of bold lines and brushwork and raw bright colours with a flair for magnitude and scale. From the 1980s, one arresting feature of her oeuvre was her predilection for vast sizes and scale, as her work began to unfurl, mural-like over stretches of canvas or paper where she moved from densely narrative and illustrative compositions to a growing simplification and economy of forms addressing social issues. The human figure remained her forte, with figures expanding from her signature portrait heads in quiet repose to an animated array of animals. Her first exhibition of paintings took place in 1950 which was followed by a string of exhibitions.

On her return from Paris, she held a string of painting exhibitions both in India and abroad. Following her academic career in the West, in the late 1970s, she joined the faculty of the Rabindra Bharati University as a reader in the visual arts department; later she became dean of its faculty of visual arts. While at the university, she initiated the practice of analyzing and copying Rabindranath Tagore's work as an exercise to delve deeper into his style as in the West one copied Old Masters as part of classroom activity, for which she received strong criticism.

The decade of the 80's was dominated by the increasingly public profile of Shanu Lahiri, as an educationist, organiser and art-activist. The decade now saw the artist engaged in a public role. Following the practice of artists creating the image of goddess Durga at Bakulbagan which started in 1975 by Nirode Mazumdar, Shanu Lahiri designed the Durga idol twice for Bakulbagan, following the lead of other artists who each year created modern and stylistic idioms to work within a clay-modelled image of the goddess.

In the last two decades, the 1990s and 2000s, her studio had been a place of continued inventiveness and innovations. Retaining her primary commitment to painting and drawing, she tested new mediums and surfaces, experimenting in different phases with enamel painting on acrylic sheets, painting on wooden and ceramic plates, etchings on X-ray plates and "torch light" drawings on bromide paper. A parallel rising urge for sculpture had seen her move from small clay models and perfume bottle figures cast in bronze.

Through her art, Shanu Lahiri addressed the contemporary realities of society. She was recognised for her highly individualistic style and became a leading artist on Kolkata's contemporary art scene, along with fellow painter Karuna Shaha.

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• 1951-won the AIFACS President Award for the first prize in oils.   
• 1974-received the Governor of West Bengal's best award.
• 1996- received the award from The Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi.
• 1999- selected as 'Shatabdir Kanya' (Woman of the Millennium) by Naba Pratisruti and in the following year she was selected as the 'Woman of the Millennium' by Biswa Bangla Sammelan. The Nivedita Puraskar was conferred on her the same year.
• 2000-2013 President of India's Nominee, Selection Committee, University of Hyderabad.
• 2002-received the Bharat Nirman Award.
• 2003-Rabindra Bharati University conferred upon her a D.Litt. for her immense contributions to the visual arts.
• 2005- Lifetime Award from the Street Exhibition Forum & the Michael Madhusudan Award.
• 2008-The Calcutta Chamber of Commerce Foundation presented her with the Prabha Khaitan Puraskar.