The retrospective exhibition on the artist Shanu Lahiri, D.Litt. (23rd January 1928 – 1st February, 2013), explores an inheritance of stories. She is presented here as much through the diverse genres of her paintings as through the rich archive of sketches, scrapbooks, exhibition catalogues, writings, and photographs that she had preserved over the years. Real and apocryphal, oral and written, visual and anecdotal stories brought to the fore in this exhibition have served as the main thread through which the dynamic life and persona of the artist is strung together.
Lahiri leaves behind a volume of work that is prolific—paintings, large and small, massive scrolls, mural layouts and collages, alongside a legacy of public art activity, memories of which still linger in the spaces where they once stood. This output is a testament to her indefatigable commitment to art practice, from her student days till the last year of her life. The exhibition engages with the artist’s flair as a writer and raconteur; her affection for the non-human imbues her paintings, children’s stories and memoirs; her involvement in setting up the first women’s art collective in the country
based in Calcutta (presently Kolkata) called The Group; and her pioneering venture of taking art from studios and classrooms to the streets of the city where she worked.
Developing a diverse pictorial repertoire and a signature modernist style, developing over time a parallel flair for writing and illustrating, Shanu Lahiri stood out in her time in many ways. Her professional career began in 1950 with a solo exhibition held while she was still a student at the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, to be followed by multiple exhibitions in India, U.S. and Canada over the next few decades. Her interest in the artistic repertoire of the French ‘high modern’ came to fruition upon receiving the French government scholarship to study painting and art-appreciation at Académie Julian and École de Louvre in 1956. In 1982, she initiated a series of public art projects on the streets of Calcutta with art graduates, co-workers and different members of the community. We encounter Lahiri in the role of an art pedagogue and administrator when she joined Rabindra Bharati University in 1979, retiring as Dean,
Faculty of Visual Arts, in 1987.
This exhibition presents a spread of Lahiri’s works that broadly draws from the main themes and phases of her artistic oeuvre, running from the 1970s till the 2000s - highlighting her particular modernist style, her cultivation of a mid-20th century Parisian aesthetic, her narrative series unfolding around the retelling of myths and legends through themes like Ragmala, Ravan-Sita, Elokeshi, and other regional folklores. Her engagement with public spaces, people and street life often translates into a signature motif—Kolkata’s hand-pulled rickshaw. The exhibition also gestures towards her penchant for scale and volume as well for the smallest of sketches on repurposed paper. To create an immersive space, reflective of her diverse life-words, the exhibition intersperses original artworks with a variety of digital archival material, text and photograph panels, a recreation of her studio and working methods, interactive conversations and videos, and take-away memorabilia.
In 2022, INTACH and Rotary set up a plaque at her studio-cum- residence in Kolkata.