About K G Subramanian - Kalpathi Ganpathi Subramanyan was born in 1924 in a village in north Kerala, India. K G Subramanyan was one of the leading artists who was a part of India's post-independence search for identity through art. He completed his Bachelor's Degree in Economics from the Presidency College in Chennai. While studying economics Subramanyan got involved in the freedom struggle. He was imprisoned and debarred from government colleges. The turning point of his life came when he joined Kala Bhavan in Santiniketan and graduated in 1948, under mentors such as Benode Behari Mukherjee, Nandalal Bose and Ramkinkar Baij. In 1951 he became a lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts in M.S. University in Baroda. He received a scholarship and went to study briefly in London at the Slade School of Art under the British Council in 1956. In 1966, Subramanyan travelled to New York as a Rockefeller Fellow where he painted on smaller canvases due to shortage of space that led him to experiment with diptychs and triptychs. In 1980, Subramanyan went back to Santiniketan to teach painting at Kala Bhavan. He continued to teach there till he retired in 1989 after which he was made a professor of Visva Bharati University.
