Sunil Madhav Sen (1910 - 1979)

Mixed Media on Paper

18 x 10.5 Inches

Signed - Lower Right

By the 1960s, Sunil Madhav Sen had moved toward a simpler, more graphic style of figuration, using bold lines and flat shapes to build his forms. In this work, a lone figure stands holding what may be an ektara-like instrument— often linked to the Baul performers of rural Bengal.

Raised in Bankura, part of the culturally rich Rarh region, Sen was shaped by its folk traditions, ritual imagery, and musical heritage. His exposure to linear practices like kantha stitching and alpona patterning informed his graphic sensibility, visible in the economy of line here. The mask-like face, with its elevated eyes and abstracted features, reflects Sen’s deep engagement with modernist vocabularies. Like Picasso, whose work he closely studied—Sen drew from non-Western forms such as ritual masks and tribal figuration to build a visual language of his own.