Debdas Chakraborty was one of the great modern Bangladeshi artists. He graduated from the Government Institute of Art in Dakha in 1956 and was employed for some years as an artist at the Agricultural Information Centre. During the 1960s he was one of the few Dakha-trained painters who exhibited regularly in West Pakistan and he also gained an international reputation. His painting has an elusive quality, an aggregation of forms often suggestive of human figures (such as in his Desire Symbols of 1963). A technique he frequently used was to start with figurative images and gradually obliterate them to produce virtually abstract works. He represented Bangladesh at the XIX International Biennale at Sao Paulo in 1987 showing five large engravings. His work is now undergoing a reappraisal and Chakraborty is increasingly recognised for his immense contribution to Pakistani and later to Bangladeshi art, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s.
