Life is short, art is long’ as Oscar Wilde would have one believe. Be that as it may but, the art that eludes public memory in Kolkata still survives the corridors of time in this new millennium in the forgotten works of paintings executed by Gopesh Chandra Chakravarty (G.C. Chakravarty). Going by a recent exhibition ‘Stranger Forms: The Forgotten Art of G.C Chakravarty’ was inaugurated on June 16 at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata which continues till Sunday June 28, 2026.
It was at the behest of Dwija Gallery, a prominent cultural space in Rajkot, India, managed by the Dwija Conservation Society of Art and Cultural Heritage. It may be deemed the first major retrospective of its kind, honoring posthumously, the remarkable yet overlooked artist of the twentieth century, which offers a long overdue reassessment of his contribution to Bengal Modernism that took the city’s art viewers by storm. The exhibition assembles together a significant body of works that traces Chakravarty’s singular artistic journey across decades of profound political, cultural and personal transformation.
Emerging from the political and cultural turbulence of the twentieth century South Asia, Gopesh Chakravarty’s art showcases a deeply personal yet historically relevant journey from lyrical introspection to unsettling figuration. Born in Sylhet in 1905, and largely self-taught after leaving formal grooming at the Government School of Art in Calcutta, Chakravarty forged an artistic language shaped in tandem with the hardship, spiritual journey and the shifting realities of a nation moving towards and beyond Independence. The painter’s craft evolved through a lifelong engagement with spiritual inquiry, literature and the darker side of the human mind which delved into poverty and the turbulent realities of South Asian history.
What draws the attention of art viewers is the aesthetic visualization that feature in the works in ‘Stranger Forms: The Forgotten Art of G.C. Chakravarty’. It unveils an artist deeply attuned to the intersections of inner experience and collective memory and it moves fluidly between lyrical introspection and unsettling figuration that sometimes conjures up the grotesque. Founder, Curator and Director of Dwija Gallery, Mit Kumar Vyas opines that more than a historical recovery, ‘Stranger Forms’ reintroduces an artist whose significance extends beyond the established narratives of Indian Modernism.
During his lifetime, Chakravarty’s work was exhibited alongside notable contemporaries such as Jamini Roy, Gopal Ghosh and DP Roy Chowdhury, yet his legacy gradually receded from public view. Equally important was his role as an educator and cultural activist. Working across diverse regions including Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Nagala and the wider Northeast, Chakravarty expande d his influence b eyond metropolitan art circles through teaching, community engagement and cultural initiatives. In a catalogue of the artist’s works published by Rabindra Bharati in the 1950’s, contemporary admirers from President Rajendra Prasad and S. Radhakrishnan to critic Kalidas and artist O.C. Ganguly lauded his works.
Among the volume of his larger canvases of fifty paintings, Chakravarty’s early works features a fascination with the subconscious and the nuptial dimensions of survival and existence. His later paintings confront the social and emotional rupture produced by famine, communal violence, displacement and authoritarian politics. Figures emerge and dissolve within ambiguous spaces, their forms fragmented or distorted reflecting the instability and metamorphosis of a rapidly changing world. Inhabiting an esoteric realm where dream and nightmare converge Chakravarty’s paintings depict mythic archetypes and spectral landscapes, where sharply perceived modern themes co exist with compositions charged with psychological intensity.
A profilic illustrator doubling up as a painter G.C. Chakravarty evolved a distinctive narrative and graphic sensibility that blurred the boundaries between fine art and popular visual culture. The hybrid approach allowed him to explore both intimate, psychological experience and wider societal anxieties with equal intensity. Throughout his oeuvre the grotesque emerges not as a spectacle but, as a critical device through which he exposed the hidden tensions, contradictions and dislocations of modern life. Through the vehicle of his paintings drawings, illustrations and archival material, ‘Strange Forms: The Forgotten Art of G.C. Chakravarty’ invites art onlookers to rediscover an artist whose works navigated the thresholds between beauty and disquiet, faith and doubt, memory and imagination.
The colour palette and texture in some works seem dramatic with hidden layers of the subconscious surfacing with his brush strokes. The exhibition places Chakravarty not only as an important figure in the art history of Bengal Modernism but, also as a visionary cultural practitioner whose works continues to resonate with contemporary concerns around identity, history and the human condition. Dwija Gallery did manage to bring about a revival of interest before the Kolkata public in salvaging the artist’s distinct work.
(THE WRITER IS A FREELANCE CONTRIBUTOR)