(1928 -1990) Mrinal Kanti Das was born in Midnapore town, West Bengal, on the 1st of July 1928. He went to the Government College of Art and Craft in Kolkata and graduated in 1948. The artist worked using mostly gouache and watercolors following the Neo-Indian School art movement founded by Abanindranath Tagore. He hardly, if ever, painted mythical or folkloric subjects, focusing on nature and people instead. In his works, he portrayed women in a variety of moods and postures placed in the context of the home or in nature. He portrayed them in everyday life and the nude. In them, he foregoes the Victorian prudishness prevalent of the era and opted to paint them sensuously with an unabashed intensity reminiscent of Indian erotic art. He was a freelance painter before he was invited by the Kala Bhavan, Viswa Bharati University to lecture on art in 1967. At the age of fifty in 1977, he had his first solo exposition in Kolkata. Later in his career, he was offered a post by the Ramakrishna Mission at their prestigious School at Narendrapur, where he taught until he died in 1990.