Anyone who visits the Design Department of the Kala Bhavana art school at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan will be familiar with the striking black-and-white mural that adorns it. A tapestry of interwoven figures, animals, birds and organic forms, it has no beginning or end. Human figures merge into animals, decorative motifs transform into living forms, and empty spaces become meaningful. There is no prescribed path, storyline or subversive messaging to follow. Instead, the eye wanders freely, discovering new connections with every glance.
I had the privilege of watching this artwork come to life while living on the campus in 2010. By then, K G Subramanyan — Mani Da to everyone around him — was already in his eighties. Yet every day, he climbed the bamboo scaffolding, tied a handkerchief around his forehead to keep away the sweat and patiently repainted the mural he had created decades earlier, covering all four sides of the two-storey building from top to bottom. Watching an artist of his stature work with such physical commitment and joy remains one of the defining memories of my years at Santiniketan.
Subramanyan was born in 1924 to a Tamil Brahmin family in Kerala. As a youngster, he participated in the freedom movement in the 1940s, even serving jail time for six months. Banned from government institutions thereafter, he joined Kala Bhavana in 1944, which helped him develop a unique artistic language, in equal parts traditional and modernist. His 1952 watercolour, Untitled (Girl with Sunflower), captures this synthesis beautifully: The almond-eyed girl, with her traditional hairstyle and adornments, is unmistakably Indian, while the pastel palette and floral backdrop draw on Western abstraction.
Apart from paintings, sculptures, and murals, Subramanyan also dabbled in poetry and writing. One of his most impactful roles, however, was as an arts educator. While principal of the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, he mentored a talented cohort of artists whose work is now simply referred to as the ‘Baroda School’. One of the greatest privileges of my life was to see him seated under the Chhatimtala tree, surrounded by students, faculty and visitors. His interactions with people felt like an education in itself. Conversations flowed effortlessly with wit, sharp criticism and humour. He displayed an extraordinary alertness to people and to life itself.
This awareness is best embodied in the Kala Bhavana mural, which is an amalgamation of his many influences, such as Indian folk-art practices and European post-Cubist abstractionism, over a decades-long practice. Despite its monochromatic nature, his work is full of vitality. There is rhythm in its lines, energy in its figures. It’s as though the mural, and the building on which it rests, are breathing as one. The more you look, the more it reveals. A boy offers a girl a flower; she eyes it with suspicion. Durga rides her tiger while, in another corner, a man — possibly Subramanyan himself — reads quietly as a woman flies above his head. Elephants march through forests to meet crocodiles. Birds emerge from curling creepers. Many-headed animals roam freely. The mythical, the mundane and the surreal exist side by side, with no hierarchy between them. In this monumental, life-defining work, Subramanyan transforms an entire building into a world inhabited equally by humans, animals, myths and nature.
On being asked why he painted it with a fragile mixture of soot and glue instead of more permanent industrial paints that would preserve it, he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll paint it again.” For him, art was not merely an object to be preserved indefinitely, but a living process of renewal. Its value lay in the artist’s willingness to return to it with the same curiosity, care and commitment in the future. This mural was never meant to defeat time, but to live with it.
Artist bio: Vandana Kothari is a contemporary Indian artist and Professor of Art at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi. Her practice explores urban life, memory, fragmentation, emotional experience and human interconnectedness.
From HT Brunch, August 8, 2026
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