The Life and Work of KG Subramanyan

In the year of the artist's birth centenary, Mortimer Chatterjee remembers this boundless creative genius across the histories of art, craft and design.

KG Subramanyan (1924-2016) is primarily known as a painter today, but that is only because recent trends have tended to pigeonhole practices into one easy label or another. But through most of Subramanyan's career, he operated in an ecosystem that was creatively promiscuous, and in which he shone as a maverick, effortlessly straddling disciplines.

Born in Kerala, the young Subramanyan was part of the freedom struggle (and briefly jailed) while studying in Madras. In the mid 1940s, he enrolled in Kala Bhavana, the fine arts school of VisvaBharati university in Santiniketan. The experience of being immersed in this atmosphere was foundational. The rural campus, proximate to Calcutta, was set up by Rabindranath Tagore in the early 20th century. At the time, both craft and design were actively incorporated in the syllabus. His teachers-especially the revered Nandalal Bose-were all advocates of a holistic educational regime in opposition to the enforced separation of disciplines imposed by the colonial education system.