The 1940s present a significant moment of transformation in the linguistic choices for a painter like Gopal Ghose ; as such it would be illuminating to trace briefly the context of this shift in the shared concerns of one of the earliest artists’ collectives in early modern Indian art.

The Calcutta Group was initiated in 1943, the year of infamous famine in Bengal. The eight participants of their first exhibition in 1945 were Prodosh Das Gupta, Kamala Das Gupta (nee T.C. Kamala), Gopal Ghose, Paritosh Sen, Nirode Majumdar, Subho Tagore, Rathin Maitra, and Prankrishna Pal.

In the context of the famine of 1943 and the subsequent social calamity of the 1946 communal riots, it has been evident that the conventional notion of Gopal Ghose as a painter of landscapes in a distinctly lyrical personal style combining the boldness of bright pure colours with the swift calligraphic lines, is but a partial view. That is not to deny entirely that Gopal Ghose painted landscapes that would fall within the said category. In these, the lyrical in colour and form combined with the gusto of a flourish in the calligraphic stroke of the brush to arrive at an expression that would approve the established stylistic identity of the artist.

Sometimes, critics have even felt impelled to draw a comparison between the calligraphic in his paintings with Far Eastern sensibilities, which although not entirely absent, exists in a sufficiently transformed ethos. Spontaneity of execution brought about in Gopal Ghose’s pictures as dynamic rhythmic flow; such flowing rhythm reflected the impulsiveness of an artist impatient to inscribe the conceived image on to the pictorial surface, thereby retaining within it a sense of emotive urgency in the very execution. And that, by definition, should qualify as expressionistic.

Gopal Ghose (1913 - 1980)

Gopal Ghose, born on the 5th of December 1913 in Shyambazar (Kolkata), spent his childhood and adolescence shifting between Simla, Benares and Allahabad, since his father was recruited. It was as early as 1927 that his father recognized his son’s interest in visual art and gifted him John Ruskin’s Elements of Drawing.  Inspired to participate in the nationalist movement, Gopal Ghose left the Anglo-Bengali College in Allahabad where he was pursuing his Intermediate studies.  In 1931 he enrolled as a student at the Maharaja School of Art & Craft, Jaipur, under guidance of Sailendranath Dey, from where he obtained his Diploma in Painting in 1935.  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 by the latter, Gopal Ghose transformed during the 1940s; his sketches of the infamous man-made famine of 1943 and the paintings executed during his association with the collective Calcutta Group testify his shift to a more contextually relevant pictorial diction.  During the early nineteen-forties he has taught at the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Kolkata, before he joined the Government School of Art, Kolkata where he taught till 1972.  His 1947 exhibition at the  Exhibition Hall, Parliament Street, New Delhi was positively appreciated by Prime Minister Jawahalal Nehru.

Gopal Ghose has received appreciative recommendations from renowned personalities including Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Stella Kramrisch. 

In 1956, he was one of the participants in a collective project involving designs by Contemporary Asian Artists engraved on Steuben Crystal exhibited at National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  In 1963 he went on a tour of the USA as part of the Foreign Leader programme of the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, US. Department of State.  In 1979 he was invited to attend a round table meeting with the Governor of Bengal, Mr. T.N. Singh at Raj Bhavan, Kolkata.
Diagnosed with lung-cancer, he was under medical attention, but breathed his last on the  30th of July, 1980.