Fibreglass, Resin, Paper Mache, Oil and Acrylic Paint
17 × 11 × 16 inches
Subba Ghosh is a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker of unusually deep formation — trained across Delhi, Moscow, and London — whose work on canvas and paper has repeatedly stepped outward into video, digital animation, and the puppet workshop. Though not a sculptor by trade, he is a maker in the fullest sense: a founder member of the Indian Printmakers’ Guild who for more than two decades also ran a working puppet atelier.
Born in 1964 in New Delhi, Ghosh took his Bachelor’s degree in Painting at the city’s College of Art in 1984, then spent three years on a Russian state scholarship at the Surikov Institute of Fine Art in Moscow, studying painting, drawing, and anatomy. Returning to his old college, he completed a Master’s in Painting with distinction in 1990, and a Commonwealth Scholarship carried him to London, where he earned a second Master’s — again with distinction — from the Slade School of Art and its school of theoretical studies in 1996. His training kept accruing sideways thereafter: a course in 3D animation in 2001, web design at Khoj the following year, and instruction in puppet fabrication under Alain Duverne in Paris — skills he exercised daily across a long tenure as graphics designer and head of the puppet-making workshop at the broadcaster NDTV.
His first solo exhibition, of paintings and drawings, was held at Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi, in 1992, followed by “Sites” at the British Council’s Queen’s Gallery, New Delhi, in 1998, a solo at Talwar Gallery, New York, in 2002, and further one-person shows at Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2009 and Indar Pasricha Contemporary Arts, London, in 2011. He exhibited prints with the Indian Printmakers’ Guild across India and in Kathmandu through the 1990s, while his video and digital work travelled to the MAAP new-media biennale in Beijing (2002), the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum’s survey of Indian video art (2004), and La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2008). More recent appearances include “The Printed Picture: Four Centuries of Indian Printmaking” at Delhi Art Gallery (2012), “Trajectories” at the Sharjah Art Museum, UAE (2015), “Brief Parables of Dystopia” at MOMus, Thessaloniki (2019), and Black Cube Gallery’s inaugural exhibition “Vocabulary of Vision” in New Delhi (2025).
Ghosh’s honours span a medal at “Graphics ’84”, the all-India print exhibition, in the year of his graduation; the Lalit Kala Akademi’s National Award in 1994; and Junior and Senior Fellowships from India’s Ministry of Culture in 1999 and 2011. In 2006 he served as visiting artist in painting and printmaking at the Queensland College of Art, Brisbane, and he has contributed essays to leading art journals and catalogues. His work is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Lalit Kala Akademi in New Delhi, the Museum of Ostrów Wielkopolski in Poland, and the Surikov Institute in Moscow. He lives and works in New Delhi.