Kolkata :

Painter Sunil Das died of a massive heart attack on Monday morning. He was 76.

Rabin Mondale, whose exhibition Das was scheduled to inaugurate on Wednesday, recalled how his friend had earned the moniker of ‘Ghora Das’ because of his passion for horses. “Though he was more than 10 years younger to me, we addressed each other by our first names. When I was a clerk with the railways, I would often go over to Sunil’s office adda. I can’t believe he won’t be there to inaugurate my show,” said Mondal, recalling the days when Das was the youngest recipient of the National Award from Lalit Kala Akademi. He was still a student of Government College of Arts then.

Artist Manu Parekh said: “I first heard about his horses when he was only in his third year. But his sketches had qualities of great masters.”

Painter Sanat Kar, who was founder secretary of Society of Contemporary Artists, remembers the day when he got a young Das to join the society. “While on a French Government Scholarship to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Sunil went to Spain and watched bullfights. That inspired him to sketch bulls too,” Kar said.

According to art historian Pranabranjan Ray, what set Das’ horses apart from those drawn by MF Husain and Nikhil Biswas was their dynamic energy. In a yet-unreleased documentary titled ‘Sunil: The Lyrical Artist’, director Arun Kumar Chakraborty has interviewed Das about how he developed his fascination for horses. The documentary has footage of Das saying: “I would spend days and nights at the stable of Mounted Police to understand the details and body contours of horses.”

At Keoratala crematorium, an emotional Chakraborty said, “During his discussions in front of poet Alokranjan Dasgupta and painter Tapan Mitra, Sunil-da had told us that he had wanted his body to kept sitting in a chair before his cremation. He was so full of energy that he never wanted to lie down even during his last journey,” Chakraborty said.

Mitra said, “He had even told us that he had kept Rs 5 lakh aside so that he is cremated with sandalwood. Unfortunately, his wishes were left unfulfilled.”

On Sunday evening, Das had called up Mitra to say he also wanted to build a Sunil Das Artist Guest House. From being someone whose father had warned him that he would go hungry to bed if he took up painting as a career, Das used a large part of his savings to support financially weak artists. “His last call to me at 6.39pm on Sunday was to inquire about the progress of the guest house,” Mitra said.

source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / The Times of India / News Home> City> Kolkata / TNN / August 11th, 2015