Standing third row second from right – Gobardhan Ash. Seated middle row from right second Percy Brown and third Jamini Roy. Front row from right fourth Atul Bose at the Government College of Art & Craft 1929Standing from left: Abani Sen, Gobardhan Ash, Bimal Dey, Jahar Sen, Ardhendu Chatterjee, Haridhan Dutta.Sitting from left: S.N. Dey, Atul Bose, Amiya Basu at Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata First Annual Exhibition, Kolkata -1933
Gobardhan Ash (5 August 1907 – 22 December 1996) was an Indian artist and an early modernist as per the art critic Sovom Som.[1][2][3][4]Ebrahim Alkazi[5] states that "Gobardhan wielded considerable influence as an artist in the 1940s". He co-founded the Art Rebel Center in 1933 and was a member of the Calcutta Group. He was mentored by and close to the artist Atul Bose.[6] Gobardhan was employed as the Chief Artist at the Indian Institute of Arts and Industry in Kolkata in 1946 for a period of two years and subsequently employed from 1953 as a Senior Teacher at the Indian Art School of Kolkata.[7][8]Ranjit Hoskote specifically identifies Gobardhan's 1948 - 1951 period wherein Gobardhan "focusses on creating a style similar to various idioms within pattachitra into a consciousness that is clearly aware of cinema and animation".[9]
