Baba Beebi aur Family 4

Born in 1961, Shyamal Mukherjee is a Bengali artist from Kolkata. He's always lived in Kolkata and travels out of the city only for his shows. He graduated (BFA) from Santiniketan in 1987 and later attended Rabindra Bharti University for MFA in 1989.

His work revolves around human figures and has a strong influence of Bengal School of art in all his work. He prefers traveling by public transports, where he can observe the daily lives and behaviour of people; the main inspiration behind his artworks. Mukherjee’s subjects wear vibrant and bright tones of red, orange, green, blue clothes and are usually some sort of performers, many times street performers. He believes that in one way or another, everyone is a performer, everyone puts an act for someone else. Through his body of work, which involves people in pairs or large groups, Mukherjee tries to emphasise how each individual is similar to another. He reflects that though two people might have difference in their physical appearance, their behaviour and attitude doesn’t differ much.

The artist uses reverse technique of painting on transparent acrylic sheet. In his free time Mukherjee teaches children painting and he feels that he actually ends up learning more than teaching. He also collects rural Bengali art and craft in his spare time.