Lalu Prasad Shaw

Siuri,West Bengal, India

10 Works

Exhibitions

Solo Exhibitions

"Babu and Bibi", Gallery 7, Mumbai in 2017.

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About Lalu Prasad Shaw

A master of both printmaking and tempera, Lalu Prasad Shaw was born in Siuri, Birbhum, in present-day West Bengal in 1937. He is one of the leading graphic artists in India, and works with different mediums. Taking inspiration from the images of the everyday life, including the lives of the working-class Bengali families as well as the middleclass, he creates artworks characterized by rich colours and a crisp, smooth finish.

After graduation, he taught art in various schools of West Bengal, before moving to Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, where he taught graphic art. There he started closely observing the Bengali middle-class people while working in the photography studio of Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan, which he started depicting in tempera, a medium with an intimate feel. His brooding characters – men, women, and children – seem frozen into a kind of quiescent gesture; they’re formal and speechless, but still expressive.

His works are characterised by skilful economy of lines, and these works reveal Shaw’s fascination with the pre-Independence Company School of art, the traditional Kalighat Patachitras, and the Ajanta cave paintings. He used to say that art was all around him. From his home, he could see the Malakars work their magic on the Sholapith craft, one among the traditional handicrafts of Bengal. He would keenly watch them work on sculpted idols of Goddess Durga, the puja adornments as well as the pata art to place in front of the idol. Soon he began to explore colours and make paintings on his own. Shaw’s art master in school, Pinakinath Bhattacharya was an early influence and Shaw remembers the trips outdoors to paint. He also counts miniature paintings and Kalighat pots as his main source of inspiration. “My works are along the lines of a templar painting,” explains the artist.

A very versatile artist who experiments with forms, Shaw’s art explored both abstraction and figuration in similar intensities. At the age of 32, he took an interest in printmaking, mastering the genre of graphic arts very quickly, and made a name for himself as a printmaker in Indian contemporary art. This fascination with printmaking started in 1967, when he joined the ‘Society of Contemporary Artists’, where he got introduced to graphic prints. Then, Suhas Roy who had returned from Paris taught Shaw the techniques of etching. He was also influenced by an exhibition of graphic prints from Czechoslovakia, which had come to Calcutta.

Recently Shaw started making sculptures, again portraying the middle-class Bengali in bronze. Shaw was not new to the medium, and had earlier experimented with scrap metal models in the past and trained students in clay modelling. But he says that his latest foray into sculpture comes from an interest to see how his two-dimensional paintings would look like in a three-dimensional format.

Shaw has exhibited extensively in India and abroad since 1956, and his works have been part of prestigious international shows such as the second British Biennale in London, 1970, two Norwegian Print Biennales in 1974 and 1978, the seventh Paris Biennale in 1971 and the second Asian Art Biennale hosted by Bangladesh in 1984.

His work is part of the permanent collections of various museums and institutions like the Birla Academy in Kolkata and the Art Forum in Singapore. Lalu Prasad Shaw lives and works in Kolkata.

Academics

He took Diploma is Painting (Western) from Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata (1954-59).

Awards

Honours and Awards

All India Graphic and Drawing Exhibition, Chandigarh - 1981

Award for Graphic Art and Drawing, India - 1978

Birla Academy Award for Graphic Art, India - 1976

National Award in Graphic Art, India - 1971

West Bengal Lalit Kala Academy's Award for Graphic Art, India - 1959

Lalu Prasad Shaw's Works

Still life

Tempera on paper board,
20x14 inches

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Bibi with mirror

Tempera on paper board,
20x14 inches

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Bibi Standing

Tempera on paper board,
20x14 inches

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Babu with bird

Bronze,
H26 x W13 x D9 inches

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Babu

Tempera on paper board,
27x20 inches

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