G R Santosh

(1929 - 1997)

Born Gulam Rasool Dar in a Shia Muslim family in Srinagar, Kashmir, on 20 June 1929, the artist took on his wife’s Hindu name ‘Santosh’ as his own, in a move that opposed patriarchy and religion.

His father’s death forced a young Gulam to work as a signboard painter, papier-mâché artist, and weaver. He learnt to paint watercolour landscapes from Dina Nath Raina in Kashmir before studying under N. S. Bendre at M. S. University, Baroda, on the recommendation of S. H. Raza. In Baroda, he produced a large body of figurative and landscape works, mainly in the cubist style.

In Kashmir, Santosh found inspiration in the Hindu and Buddhist tantric cults that had coexisted with the region’s Sufi mysticism for centuries. At the Amarnath cave in Kashmir in 1964, Santosh had a deeply spiritual experience that turned him towards the philosophy of tantra. Driven by the primordial purusha-prakriti concept of cosmic creation, he expressed the fusion of the sexual and the transcendental in his works and pioneered the neo-tantra school. An acclaimed writer and poet in Kashmiri and Urdu, Santosh also wrote on tantric philosophy in English.

Santosh was awarded the Lalit Kala Akademi’s national award thrice, in 1957, 1964 and 1973, the Kala Ratna Award by All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, in 1991, and received the Padma Shri from the Government of India in 1977. He also won the Sahitya Akademi award for his collection of poems, Besukh Ruh, in 1979. He passed away on 10 March 1997.