Jiban Biswas was born and brought up in Birbhum, and received his degree in art from College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata. His paintings have a soothing effect on the observers’ eyes. His art revolves around animals; domestic and wild, and is often set in villages or forests.
Jiban uses a combination of bright and calm colours. He uses vivid shades of blue, green, red and yellow for his backgrounds and paints his subjects in lighter colours, such as white or yellow. Cows, calves, bulls and oxen are an important part of Jiban’s paintings. His subjects are adorned in a combination of modern and traditional decorations. The huge red tilak on forehead, golden horns, shining bells and golden-red cloth wrapped around the neck.
These paintings resemble the bulls and oxen decorated for Pola a festival celebrated in Central and Southern India, and Govatsa Dwadashi celebrated few days before Diwali, in Northern, Central and Western India, to pay respects to cattle. Other than the traditional decorations, Jiban often has interesting contemporary decoration on the cattle. Face and body tattoos, nose rings, necklaces, numerous ear piercings, colourful sunglasses and hairbands are an inevitable part of these cows. These subjects are also accompanied by vintage and modern gadgets such as gramophones, radio transistors, and headphones. Other than cattle, Jiban also found his subjects in Indian spirituality. His spiritual paintings have Buddha and Ganesha as their subjects.
Since graduation, Jiban has displayed his works in over 40 exhibitions, in India and in international shows in France, Germany and England among many other countries. In 2003, he received Ravi Jain Memorial Scholars.