Rabin Mondal (1929-2019) was a well known Indian painter, born in Kolkata. He graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Vidyasagar Art School. Due to financial constraints, Mondal had a difficult upbringing and also as a youngster witnessed the devastating effects of the 1943 Great Bengal Famine and the pre-Partition riots that ravaged the state. These incidents have since translated onto his canvases. His works exploit the grotesque to express inner turmoil and human struggles. His feeling towards his environment has been rather queer.

As a young painter, Mondal was attracted by Jamini Roy’s folk style and Rabindranath Tagore’s disquieting paintings and drawings. He joined the Vidyasagar College of Art in 1949 in Kolkata. A festival of French artists being held in the city, exposed him to the works of French modernist artists. Prior to this, he was only familiar with different schools of Indian art, particularly the Bengal school and had no exposure to the international art world. The festival of French artists was virtually a turning point in his artistic career. “This was like opening a window to an astounding, astonishing, unsuspected world,” he says. This encounter with avant-garde Western art helped him to later incorporate elements from it in his own work.

Mondal grew up in a populous industrial town of Howrah, near Kolkata. “I know the big city across the Ganga intimately,” he says. “In the dark alleys of the city, nightmarish poverty stared one in the face. I saw the poorest of the poor and the affluent live within a stone throw away form each other. It was tragic to watch some lying untreated, while those who could afford it continued to spend money on even a dead man.” The industrial belt of Howrah, with its inherent tendency towards violence, anguish and suffering influenced him deeply and found its way into his works. So did ugly street battles fought by political parties. Mondal discovered that his artistic temperament was out of keeping with the hostile environment and situation.

Mondal`s works are mainly figurative. He paints in bold strokes and creates tableaux, whose themes are universal. Rabin takes you on a journey, through bleak landscapes of grief and hurt, towards a strange world of deliverance, pure and aching with faith. We all recognize the people he paints. We empathize with them. They come from where we come. They want to go where we all want to go. They seek what we all seek, each in our own way. They are lost, proud people—left to fend for themselves in this strange, bewildering world of aching solitude. Through them, and through us who observe them, who see their destinies playing out, Rabin the quiet storyteller tells us the epic tale of our miraculous times. In that sense, he is possibly the finest chronicler of hope. Through him and his art, an entire generation recounts its dreams, its aspirations.

“For me, art is an expression of my inner most self. This is the only medium I know. With my brush, oils, pencil and charcoal, I portray emotions. And before I know it, I am transported into another world. I gradually find my canvas coming alive.” – Rabin Mondal.

His works were first displayed in 1955, as part of a group exhibition along with other leading artists of Bengal school. He held his first solo exhibition in 1961 at the Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata. In ’64, he worked in a group of artists and exhibited at AIFACS at New Delhi. Following the success of the show, Mondal co-founded the “Calcutta Painters” group with fellow artists Bijan Choudhary, Nikhil Biswas, Prokash Karmakar, Bimal Banerjee and others.