Having rendered human figures with a representational focus relentlessly, as evidenced by the extensively documented ‘Ajanta project’ of the early years of his career in the 1960s, Haloi then chose an alternate direction in his creative pursuits in subsequent decades.

He had spent seven years at the archaeological site of Ajanta, sketching, drawing and documenting the deteriorating murals on the cave walls that proliferated with Buddhist Jataka stories. Profusely figurative, what one marvels at here are Haloi’s skills of academic excellence and remarkable dexterity in his transcription of the languorous line of the Ajanta figures. Haloi also sharpened his skills at traditional painting techniques, comprehending pictorial structure and scale through the lateral spread of the painted murals. Alongside his drawings of mural compositions, we also find innumerable sketches through which he connected with the labouring communities that lived in the vicinity of the remote archaeological site.

One would have presumed that Haloi's preoccupation with the ‘human figure’ would have continued on his return to Calcutta (Kolkata now). But it did not persist. This presents the intriguing question: What triggered in Haloi the need to disengage with the figural-narrative paradigm, while his contemporaries (and the mainstream art scene) in Calcutta remained deeply committed to expressing social subjects, existential angst, and human catastrophes emphatically via the figural mode? Haloi too was a witness to the turbulent times before and after Independence, to the deep wounds caused by the manufactured Bengal Famine (1943), and to the hardships and suffering all around him, but he never turned to them as subjects of paintings. He chose instead to meander along the paths of abstraction, where, from his visual field, human figures were the first to recede, after which recognizable objects from his everyday world gradually diminished too. Haloi perhaps stood alone amidst his generation as the one who painted without being weighed down by a past of "prescriptive manifestos”, seeking a quite distinct artistic language that could keep evolving. In fact, if there is something consistent and enduring in Haloi's work, it is the poetic grace embedded in his pictorial language along with a subtlety of expression.

-An excerpt from the essay ‘Re-citing Land’ by Roobina Karode from ‘Ganesh Haloi: A Rhythm Surfaces in the Mind’.

Ganesh Haloi(b. 1936)

Ganesh Haloi (b.1936) is a Kolkata-based artist, born in Jamalpur, Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh). He moved to Calcutta in 1950 following the Partition of India. The trauma of displacement left its mark on his work as it did on some other painters of his generation. Since then his art has exhibited an innate lyricism and a sense of nostalgia for a lost world. He graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta in 1956. In the following year, he was appointed by the Archaeological Survey of India to create replicas of Ajanta murals. Seven years later, Haloi returned to Calcutta. From 1963 until his retirement, he taught at the Government College of Art and Crafts. He has been a Member of The Society of Contemporary Artists, Calcutta since 1971.

He has participated in several group exhibitions in India, Documenta 14 at Athens & Kassel, Greece/Germany; Architecture of Life, at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archives at BAM/PFA, Berkeley, California; 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin; A Special Arrow Was Shot in the Neck, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and over the edge, crossing the line five artists from Bengal at KNMA, Delhi. He is represented by Akar Prakar Kolkata & New Delhi. He has had various solo exhibitions in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Dhaka, and New York including Re-citations: rhymes, about land, water and sky six decades of painting at Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata with KNMA, 2024; Re-citing Land at The Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, Mumbai in collaboration with KNMA, Delhi 2022; The Architectonics of Form at Akar Prakar Kolkata and New Delhi in 2022, Form & Play at Asia Week New York in 2020 to name a few.

The artist lives and works in Kolkata.