Born in 1933 in Chikhli, a village in southern Gujarat, Chhaganbhai Dayaram Mistry grew up in an environment deeply rooted in craftsmanship. His father, a skilled and inventive artisan capable of repairing and constructing objects, from radios to a handmade gramophone, played a formative role in shaping his sensibility. Early exposure to tools, materials, and improvisation fostered in Mistry an intuitive understanding of form, structure, and creativity. As a child, he fashioned toys such as bullock carts and animal figures from wood and clay, an impulse that would later inform his artistic language.

Surrounded by textiles, temple carvings, metalwork, and everyday decorative practices, Mistry developed a keen sensitivity to surface, ornament, and detail. After completing his schooling, he moved to Ahmedabad and enrolled at C. N. College of Fine Arts, where he earned a Diploma in Painting in 1960, followed by an Art Master’s qualification. He later joined the institution as a teacher, maintaining a long association with academic practice while continuing his independent work.

Mistry’s artistic philosophy was grounded in the belief that creativity and skill are inseparable. While academically trained, he turned consistently toward vernacular and folk traditions for inspiration. Through extensive travels across Gujarat, he documented and absorbed visual elements from village wall paintings, textile patterns, mirror work, popular prints of deities, and ritual spaces. Rather than replicating these forms, he reinterpreted them, negotiating the relationship between folk idioms and modern painting. His works reflect an engagement with questions of how to know and internalise folk art without reducing it to mere imitation.

Stylistically, his paintings are marked by rhythmic compositions, vibrant colour, and a strong decorative impulse. Motifs such as horses, rural landscapes, and symbolic forms recur, often infused with the vitality of Gujarat’s folk and tribal aesthetics. His academic grounding enabled him to balance structure with spontaneity, resulting in a distinctive visual language.

Mistry began exhibiting his work in the early 1960s and went on to present a substantial number of solo exhibitions across India and internationally. Notable among these were shows at the Sanskar Kendra Museum (1972), the Gujarat Vidyapith (1973), Jehangir Art Gallery (1978, 1989, and 2003), Contemporary Art Gallery, Ahmedabad (1979), Gallery Aurobindo, New Delhi (1992), and the Bhowangree Gallery, London (1991), among others. He also held later exhibitions such as Force of Life (2001) and drawing shows in Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Chandigarh, reflecting his continued engagement with both painting and drawing. He passed away in 2023, leaving behind a significant body of work that bridges vernacular craft traditions and modern Indian painting.