dilip sur

Dilip Sur was born in 1960 in West Bengal and graduated in Painting and Sculpture from Government College of Art, Calcutta. He went on to do MA in Painting from College of Art, New Delhi and Post Graduation in Painting from Byam Shaw School of Art, London.

Dilip Sur was awarded Evelyn Williams Fellowship, Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Art; ‘Kunstbrucke’ Artist Residency Berlin; UNESCO Fellowship, European Ceramics Centre, Holland; Delfina Artist Residency, Spain, and Charles Wallace Trust, British Council Post Graduate Fellowship.

Sur has participated in various significant group shows in London and elsewhere. His last solo was at Grosvenor Gallery, London in 2006. He teaches at the Royal College of Art, London where he has been teaching since 1996. 

Dilip Sur’s use of expressionist visual language appears to have followed a consistent trajectory His paintings are to some extent narrative works based on legend, myth or perhaps folk stories. All making use of very strong colour contrasts– dense blacks and strong yellows tend to dominate the imagery. Gradually, however, the strong, even violent colour structure of the earlier paintings softened into a more vaporous language, in which objects are hinted at rather than described and sharp-edged contours give way to areas of saturated colour. This is an unusual development for an Indian artist and it offers great opportunities for innovatory works. Sur’s recent work employs a literal vastness in the way space is unfolded and then released to extend meaning.