(1932 - 2019)

Rabin Mondal was born in 1932 to a low-income family of a government official in Kolkata. He obtained a Fine Arts Diploma from Vidyasagar Art School. His artwork uses the grotesque to depict internal conflict and human struggles. His attitude toward his surroundings has been strange. Perhaps the environment in which he spent his formative years played a role. Mondal was raised in Howrah, a populated industrial town close to Kolkata. Howrah's industrial area, with its innate propensity for violence, suffering, and anguish, had a profound impact on him and can be seen in many of his works. Similarly, ugly street fights between political parties did. Mondal realised that his artistic temperament did not fit the hostile surroundings and circumstances.

Young painter Mondal was drawn to the folk art of Jamini Roy and the unsettling artwork of Rabindranath Tagore. However, the French artists' exhibition effectively marked a turning point in his artistic career.

His art was first shown in public in 1955 as a component of a group exhibition with other notable Bengal School artists. In 1961, he held his first solo exhibition at Kolkata's Academy of Fine Arts. The majority of Mondal's works are figurative. He uses strong brushstrokes to paint and creates tableaux with timeless themes. His figures' faces peer out at you from the canvas, strange and contemplative but also powerful and defiant. Not yet defeated, surviving only by sheer willpower.

The only colours that occasionally peek through are moss green and turquoise. He primarily uses dense pigments in blacks and reds. Mondal has also participated actively in the city's organisations for avant-garde artists. From 1979 to 1982, he was a member of the Lalit Kala Akademi, and he also had a book of his drawings published. To become one of India's most prominent modern painters, Rabin Mondal had to work for many years.

The artist died on July 2, 2019.