INSPIRATION

INDIAN ORIGIN

Age no bar for colour: Women of all ages wear bright colours.

India may be the only country in the world where you never find two women on the street wearing the same pattern or colour of sari or other flowing traditional garments.

Sen is always surprised at how manufacturers, weavers or fabric painters can produce individual pieces of countless garments and colourful dress to please their women customers.  

From the young to middle age to older women, they are always extremely colourful in dress, especially in the northern state of Rajasthan. This cornucopia of colours in Indian women’s dressing gives Sen the grip of colour abundance in his paintings.

INDIA’S BLOODY INDEPENDENCEIN 1947

When India was partitioned 1947 to create Pakistan, a new country for Muslims, about 20 million people of Bengal and Punjab were displaced and brutally victimized. Sen’s wealthy, literate family had huge landed property in erstwhile East Bengal, the present Bangladesh, which was carved out to be East Pakistan for Muslims. So for being Hindus Sen’s family was overnight evicted from their home. Without taking any possessions, they fled for their lives amidst people warring over religion, and so became squatted refugees in West Bengal.