Bikash Bhattacharjee

Bikash Bhattacharjee was born in Kolkata in 1940. He graduated from the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, Kolkata in 1963 where he began teaching in 1968. In 1973, he began teaching at the Government College of Art and Craft and taught there till 1982. He was also a member of the Society of Contemporary Artists.

Acclaimed the world over for bringing realism back to Indian art , Bikash Bhattacharjee in his art portrayed subjects from his immediate socio-cultural milieu – old men and women, children, women, etc.

He began showing his work in 1965, and was the subject of dozens of solo exhibitions and dozens more group shows worldwide. He received numerous awards along the way, by institutions including the Academy of Fine Art, Kolkata, in 1962, the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata, in 1971, and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, which bestowed on him it's National Award in 1971 and 1972. In 1988 he was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri.

His first solo exhibition was at Kolkata in 1965. His paintings were exhibited outside India; he had shows in 1969 at Paris; between 1970 and 72 in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Hungary; in London in 1982; and in New York in 1985.

In 2000, Bhattacharjee suffered a paralytic stroke that left him paralysed and was unable to paint. He died on 18 December 2006.