Amal Ghosh

Amal Kumar Ghosh (January 1, 1933 - February 24, 2022) was an Indian-born British painter, mural artist, and educator. Ghosh was the Co-founder of Horizon Gallery.

Amal Ghosh

Early Life and Education

Ghosh was born to Subodh and Parul Ghosh in Calcutta, India. His father was a freedom fighter and spent many years imprisoned by the British.

He studied painting at the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Calcutta, from 1953 to 1958. Ghosh migrated to London, the UK, from Calcutta, India, in the late 1950s and enrolled for a post-graduation diploma in Stained Glass at the Central School of Art and Design, London (now known as Central St. Martins College of Art and Design) from 1958 to 1960. From 1980 to 1981, he pursued a Master of Arts in Art Therapy from Hertfordshire College of Arts, St. Albans.

Career

Ghosh established his painterly vocabulary with enamel, stained glass, and oil paintings that incorporate elements from various schools of modern European art, displaying an interest in color theory, abstraction, and symbolism, while being simultaneously steeped in an understanding and appreciation of his Indian heritage and its artistic history. He co-established Horizon Gallery, mainly for the South Asian diaspora, on Marchmont Street, London, which is now closed.

Ghosh started teaching at the Central School of Art and Design in 1968. Following that, he taught at the University of the Arts London until he retired in 1998 and became a Judge of their Cecil Collins Prize. Moreover, Ghosh taught Stained Glass and Transparent Media at the Central School of Art and Craft from 1977 to 1998. He was the Professor Emeritus at Kolkata Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata University, and Santineketan Vis Bharatiti.

Ghosh taught at The City Lit Centre of Adult Studies, where he selected and trained 17 students from the stained glass classes for The Exhibition Of Stained Glass for the Lord Chancellor's State Room. Students were trained regarding the exacting techniques for traditional stained glass.

Ghosh was the tutor of the artists Helen Maurer and Tim Cunliffe. He paid homage to the cricket sports with the Gujarati community in Leicester as part of Channel 4's Indian summer season, a chain of celebratory events reflecting Indian life and culture in India and the UK to mark the four England v India test matches. Ghosh created enamel panels to surround a run-down family picnic area in Leicester's Belgrave Park.

He was commissioned to produce the enamel panel for The Brentford Oral History Compilation, as part of the Brentford Mural Commission in 2001. As a British South Asian visual artist, in 1987, Ghosh's Allegory Series was exhibited at Horizon Gallery show, Connections. Its originals are located at the Panchayat Archive at the University of Westminster. He created Kolkata's first mosaic mural for the façade of the Brabourne Road branch of UCO Bank in 1963.

Ghosh was interviewed by BBC radio and talked on podcasts, including the South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive (SADAA).

Selected Solo Exhibitions

• 1969 Vanview Gallery, London
• 1969 Gallery Grude, Oslo
• 1970 Gallery Grude, Oslo
• 1971 Sheila Davis Gallery, London
• 1972 BI-Z Gallery, Kristiansand, Norway
• 1974 University of Leicester, Leicester
• 1981 Birla Academy, Calcutta
• 1982 Leinster Fine Arts, London
• 1986 RIBA, London
• 1987 Connections, Horizon Gallery, London
• 1988 Nottingham Playhouse, Nottingham
• 1991 Amal Ghosh, Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi
• 1995 Amal Ghosh: Vitreous Enamel Murals, Eastman Dental Hospital, London
• 2014 Amal Ghosh, Galerie 88, Kolkata
• 2011 Snow Soliloquy Amal Ghosh, Galerie 88, Kolkata

Selected Group Exhibitions

• 1974 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (also 1975 and 1977)
• 1982 Between Two Cultures, Barbican Concourse, London
• 1993 Transition of Riches, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
• 1988 Numaish Lalit Kala, Bluecoat, Liverpool
• 1990 In Focus, Horizon Gallery, London

Selected Public Collections

• Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• University of Leicester
• Arvika Municipality, Sweden
• Landstinget, Sweden
• Birla Academy, Calcutta
• Lemusée de l’Évêché, Limoges, France
• Decorative Art Museum, Palanga, Lithuania
• Arts Council of Great Britain
• Ely Cathedral
• Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
• Walsall Museum
• British Council, Calcutta
• Bradford Art Galleries and Museums
• Bengal Foundation, Dhaka
• Fukuoka Asian art Museum, Japan

Selected Public Commissions, with Iris Hudson-Ghosh

• Great Ormand Street Hospital, London; Tile mural, 1981
• House of Lords, Palace of Westminster, London; Stained glass shields, 1982
• Charing Cross Hospital, London; Vitreous enamel, 1986
• Manchester Cathedral; Ambry and Architrave, enamel, copper and gold, 1986
• Eastman Dental Hospital, London; two Vitreous enamel murals, 1991-1992
• West Middlesex University Hospital, London; Glass and metal sculptural hanging, 1998
• Hillingdon Hospital, Uxbridge; Glass hanging, 2000
• Waterways Mural, Brentford, 2001

Bibliography

Selected Collection

• Amal Ghosh, Introduction, Between Two Cultures, London: Indian Artists UK, 1982.
• Michael Horn, Amal Ghosh at the Horizon Gallery, Bazaar Magazine, No.3, pp.17-18, September 1987.
• Onita Hudson, Amal Ghosh at the Horizon Gallery, Art Rage, No.18, p.41, Autumn 1987.
• Sutapa Biswas, Introduction, Numaish Lalit Kala, Liverpool: Bluecoat, 1988.
• Amal Ghosh (ed.), In Focus, London: Horizon Gallery, 1990.
• Andrea Finn, Amal Ghosh: Allegories in Exile, Amal Ghosh, Catalogue No.10, New Delhi: Art Heritage Gallery, 1991.
• Sonali Fernando, Amal Ghosh, Transition of Riches, Birmingham: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, pp.34-37, 1993.
• Tania Guha, Transition of Riches, Third Text, 7:25, pp.81-86, 1993.
• Amal Ghosh, Bangalore: Gallery Sumukha, c.1999.
• Amal Ghosh and Juginder Lamba (eds.), Beyond Frontiers: Contemporary British Art by Artists of South Asian Descent, London: Saffron Press, 2001.
• Eddie Chambers, Black Artists in British Art: A History since the 1950s, London: I.B. Tauris, 2014
• Nazneen Østrem-Khan, London - Immigrant City, 2021

Awards

• The Shilpi Maha Samman Award, 2017

Personal Life

Ghosh was married to Iris Annette Hudson-Ghosh. His first wife was Berit Lykken Ghosh. Ghosh had a daughter, Ida Lykken Ghosh, and a son, Arun Ghosh. He died after a brief illness in London on February 24, 2022.