Arun BOSE

Born in Dacca (now Dhaka), which was then part of British India (now Bangladesh), Arun Bose (1934-2007) formally trained as an artist in Calcutta at the Government College of Art and Craft Kolkata. He graduated in 1955.  For the next 7 years he was active in Calcutta, creating and teaching.  In 1962 he took the talents he had developed to the proverbial West.  Upon his arrival in France he was introduced to printmaking at Atelier 17, under the guidance of S.W. Hayter, and with the help of a French Government Scholarship.  He also learned fresco technique at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris simultaneously.  At that time fellow Indian artist Krishna Reddy was associate director at the famed Atelier 17 printmaking studio.  It is likely Bose learned many intaglio techniques from Reddy, who was ten year his elder, as well as from Hayter.  Many of Bose’s prints are aquatints and etchings printed in the simultaneous color printing technique, also named color viscosity, for which Atelier 17 was famous.  Bose moved back to Calcutta from circa 1964 to 1968, before moving on to New York that year.  There he studied at the Pratt Graphic Center, and received the John D. Rockefeller 3rd Fund Fellowship in 1968.  He was proud to have been part of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop as well, and he himself taught printmaking, apparently at Queens College.

Bose’s paintings, like his prints, are characterized by vibrant colors and tend towards abstraction.  Bose describes his inspiration clearly: "I have no axe to grind and no profound message to impart. I am not driven by the unseen forces of the mind and do not try to delve into the dark recesses of the sub-conscious. My art is a visual experience that delights the senses and gives us a moment of beauty."

A biographical sketch compiled by the artist circa 1969 can be found HERE.