Amal Ghosh was born in Calcutta, British India (now Kolkata, India) in 1933. He moved to London, England in 1958 to study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He is known for his central involvement in the Indian Painters Collective, later developed into the Indian Artists UK and Indian Arts Council, the first artist collectives of their kind in the UK, and as one of the first tutors of Asian origin to work in a British art college.
Artist and teacher, Amal Ghosh was born in Calcutta, British India (now Kolkata, India) in 1933. He studied painting at the Government College of Art and Craft whose educational focus had evolved over the twentieth century, from ancient Indian and Mughal to Euro-centric art; as Ghosh recalled: ‘cultural colonialism ensured that my initial development as an artist had little to do with my own cultural heritage […] modelled in philosophy and practice on the Slade School of Fine Art in London’ (Ghosh and Lamba, 2001). Excelling at his studies, however, Ghosh moved to London, England, attending Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London) from 1958-60. There he specialised in mural painting under the system called 'Basic Design', which emphasised line, pattern and form to achieve sensory or emotional affects. Taught by artists Cecil Collins and Alan Davie, who were both inspired by Eastern art and spirituality in different ways, Ghosh recalled that they ‘reaffirmed and valued my Indian heritage in a way that had not been possible in India’ (Ghosh and Lamba, 2001). He then attended Hertfordshire College of Art and Design, St Albans (Buckman, 2006, now University of Hertfordshire).
Ghosh exhibited frequently in London in this period, including solo exhibitions at the Vanview Gallery (1969), and thrice at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition (1974, 1975, 1977). In 1976, with Ibrahim Wagh, Prafulla Mohanti and Yashwant Mali, Ghosh was one of the founding members of Indian Artists UK (IAUK); a group which aimed to provide exhibition opportunities and to work collectively to raise awareness of Indian arts and culture in the UK. IAUK emerged out of the Indian Painters Collective, one of various groups of South Asian artists throughout the 1960s and 1970s who collaborated in order to counteract their experiences of ‘aesthetic unappreciation and discrimination in Britain’ (Moore, 2019). Ghosh was on the selection committee for one of the group’s most significant achievements, the exhibition Between Two Cultures, held at the Barbican Art Centre’s Concourse, London in 1982. Coinciding with the Festival of India, in the catalogue’s introduction Ghosh called for an acceptance and acknowledgement of ‘the Indian past’ and the ‘British present and future’, and the hope of creating ‘greater awareness and break down some of the prejudice towards the Indian Artist in the UK’ (Ghosh, 1982). IAUK renamed itself the Indian Arts Council in 1983, and established the Horizon Gallery on Marchmont Street, London in 1987.
Whereas his earlier paintings had been inspired by abstract expressionism, Ghosh's works from the mid-1980s were characterised by human and animal forms depicted in non-naturalistic, abstract ways. He began combining the modernist contortions of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall with symbolic animals and creatures from Hindu and Buddhist visual culture (Correia, South Asian Diaspora Arts Archive). In its inaugural year, Ghosh held a solo show at the Horizon Gallery, Connections, during which one reviewer praised him for creating a body of work ‘relevant to its time in an attempt to confirm hope and salvation through creativity’ (Horn, 1987). After showing his work in a group show, Transition of Riches, at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery in 1993, a critic described Ghosh's paintings as enacting ‘unspoken, emotionally charged dramas that resonate with the promise of narrative, but remain hermetically sealed’ (Guha, 1993). Other group shows included Numaish Lalit Kala at Bluecoat, Liverpool (1988), and, alongside Mohanti, Wagh and Suresh Vedak, in the fourth instalment of the Horizon Gallery’s In Focus series (1990). He also executed a number of public commissions encompassing mosaic and tile murals, stained glass and sculptural glass pieces, including for London's Eastman Dental Hospital (1991–92), West Middlesex University Hospital (1997) and the Grand Union Canal at Brentford, Middlesex (2001).
From the late 1960s Ghosh taught enamelling and then later stained glass at what was to become Central Saint Martins, under Patrick Reyntiens as Head of Fine Art, and was one of the first lecturers of Asian origin to teach at a British art school. Ghosh became course director for stained glass when Reyntiens retired in 1986, before retiring himself in 1997. Ghosh also established the popular stained glass course at the City Literary Institute (City Lit) in the 1960s, teaching there until the 1990s, and organising a student commission of heraldic shields at the House of Lords (1981). He also taught at Froebel College, University of Roehampton (Buckman, 2006). In 2001, with Juginder Lamba, Ghosh co-edited Beyond Frontiers: Contemporary British Art by Artists of South Asian Descent, marking the first survey the work of contemporary British artists whose ancestral roots lie in the countries and cultures of South Asia. Amal Ghosh died in London, England on 24 February 2022. His works are held in UK public collections, including the V&A, Birmingham Museums Trust, and the Arts Council Collection; archive material is held by Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.