Â鶹APP

Photo by Chetan Nikam –

10 Most Famous Indian painters

Indian art consists of a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, pottery, and textile arts such as woven silk. A strong sense of design is characteristic of Indian art and can be observed in its modern and traditional forms.

Thus to demonstrate all this there are the people behind making the art in their country successful and notable in their history. With their artworks, they gained recognition as famous Indian painters.

They include Raja Ravi Varma, Amrita Sher Gil, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, S.H. Raza, Tyeb Mehta, Satish Gujral, Rabindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose. M.F Husain and Francis Newton Souza.

1. Raja Ravi Varma

He was born on April 29, in Kilimanoor India. He died on October 2, 1906. Varma was the first artist to achieve international acclaim.

The revelation of his artist gift was when he was 11 years old. He produced a number of aesthetic works between 1870 and 1878.

The first Indian artists to use oil in paints and to master the art of lithographic reproduction of his work.

His paintings included the portraits of both Indians and British in India. He was the 1st Indian to use western techniques of perspective and compositions and to adapt them to Indian subjects, styles, and themes.

Through his paintings, he won the Governor’s Gold Medal in 1873 for the painting Nair Lady Adorning Her Hair. His paintings include Harischandra in Distress, Jatagu Vadha, and Shri Rama Vanquishing the Sea.

2. Amrita Sher Gil

Photo by Wikimedia commons –

She was a Hungarian Indian painter born on January 30, 1913, in Budapest, Hungary. She died on December 5, 1941, in Lahore, Pakistan.

Her early paintings displayed a huge western influence which she mainly practiced around the 1930s in the Bohemian circles of Â鶹APP.

Her oil painting called Young Girls became one of her major works to receive appreciation in 1932.

Her work at that time included themes like self-portraits in various moods, life in parts and portraits in various moods, life in Â鶹APP, and parts of India during her stay there in 1937 making her famous trilogy of the Bride’s Toilet, South Indian Villagers Going to Market and Brahmacharis.

Her work revealed her sense of colors of empathy for her subjects in despair which she imbibed in India.

3. Vasuedo S. Gaitonde

He was of India’s foremost abstract painters born in 1924 in Nagpur, India. He died on August 10, 2001, in New Delhi, India.

His paintings were a result of influence by the work of the German Expressionist Paul Klee.

He held strong beliefs in his identity as a painter and isolated himself from others, removing distractions that interfered with his goal of achieving the purest form of expression through light, color, and texture.

4. S.H Raza

Photo by Chetan Nikam –

He was born on February 22, 1922, in Mandla, India. He died on July 23, 2016, in New Delhi, India. He was an Indian painter who lived and worked in France. 

He used oil and acrylics for his paintings which highlighted Indian ethnography. He incorporated the Indian concepts of space and time which was a huge hit among French, Indian, and other art lovers worldwide.

His initial paintings revolved around expressionistic landscapes. He believed the Bindu to be the center of creation and existence and his works reflect this particular thinking. His artworks were displayed in a number of exhibitions all over India.

One of his paintings was reportedly sold for the US $ 1.4 million at an auction in December 2006. His artworks include Clotcher du Village of 1958, Saison I of 1966, Bindu, and many others.

5. Tyeb Mehta

He was an Indian, painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. He was born on July 26, 1925, in India. He died in July 2009, in Mumbai, India.

His paintings were of figures set amidst diagonal shapes of color. His artistic paintings were influenced by the work of Francis Bacon and Barnet Newsman.

The subject matter of falling bodies and religious motifs as seen in his painting Kali of 1989, came from his childhood recollections of violence.

His major paintings themes included A Poor Rickshaw Puller and Trussed Bulls. His paintings Falling Figures of 1991 were an inspiration of his real-life incident when he witnessed a man being stoned to death by a mob. 

The Santiniketan Triptych series was a collection of paintings he came up with during his stay at Santiniketan.

6. Satish Gujral

He was born on December 25, 1995, at Jhelum, Pakistan. He died on March 26, 2020, in New Delhi, India.

He was an Indian, sculptor, Muralist, and writer of the post-independent era. He joined the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore in 1939 to study applied arts.

His paintings were influenced by the suffering people who lost their families and homes because of the partition of the country.

He created his work after understanding their nuances and the history behind them. His artworks include Nehru of 1957 and Indira Gandhi in 1957.

7. Rabindranath Tagore

He was born on May 7, 1861, in Kolkata India. He died on August 7, 1941, 1941 at Jorasanko Thakurbari, Kolkata, India.

He was a Bengali polymath, poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer, and painter.

He began painting in his sixties and produced thousands of works. He became the first Indian artist to exhibit his works across Europe, Russia, and the U.S in the 1930s.

His paintings style is individual, characterized by simple bold forms and rhythmic quality. His first paintings are imaginative works of animals or imaginary creatures. In his portraits, he renders the human face in a way reminiscent of a mask or persona.

He did not name his paintings, by this, he tried to free them literary imagination and to free them from his own concerns as a writer.

8. Beohar Rammanohar Sinha

Photo by Wikimedia –

Beohar Rammanohar Sinha is known internationally for his modern artist from Shantiniketan. He is famous for the unique sino-indian style of painting in mixed-media and watercolour.

Beohar Rammanohar Sinha was mentored by the revivalist modernist Indian maestro Nandalal Bose and also worked with Chines maestros Li Keran, Qi Baishi, Fu Naoshi and many artists.

He became a prominent painter when he decorate he original calligraphic manuscript of Constitution of India which played a significant role in India’s cultural diplomacy with the Far East.

Also painted a multitude of murals in Fresco-secco exhibited his paintings globally.

Of importance to note is that Beohar Rammanohar Sinha paintings have been part of the numerous prestigious public and private collections in European, North American and Asian countries.

9. M.F Husain

Photo by Wikimedia commons –

He was an Indian artist known for vibrant colored narrative paintings in a cubist modified style. He was born on September 17, 1915, at Pandharpur, India.

He died on June 9,, 2011 at Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK. He started his painting career as a painter of Cinema Holdings.

He marked his beginning by painting the Hindu deity Ganesha. Many of his paintings were based on the British rules, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Ramayana.

10. Francis Newton Sousa

He was born on April 12, 1924, in Goa, India. He died on March 28, 2002.

He was a British Asian artist and a founder member of the Progressive Artists Group of Bombay.

His work is characterized by Expressionist and Art Brut Influences and thick swaths of luminous color which give his paintings an animated quality.  He became one of the first post-independence Indian painters to gain recognition in the West.

His success as an artist took off following the publication of his autobiographical essay Nirvana of Maggot in 1951.

The painters have brought out state uniqueness in painting, bringing out their creativity in art, devoting their life to painting and as a result achieving fame and name which makes part of an important history of their country and globally.