Debi Prasad Roy Choudhury was born in the year 1899 in Tejhat, now a part of Bangladesh Initially a student of Abhanindranath Tagore, Roy later moved to Italy to learn sculpting under Hironmoy Choudhury and portraiture from the Italian painter EBoyess Debi Prasad loved experimenting with new ideas and techniques and was the first modern Indian artist to sculpt in Bronze Since portraiture and sculpting were still relatively western techniques during that time he did initially face a little backlash from the Bengal School of Art His major source of inspiration for sculpting was the work of the French impressionist sculptor Auguste Rodin 

His most popular work is the Gyarah Murti Statue in New Delhi He was commissioned to build that statue by the Government of India to commemorate the historic Dandi March The statue was so popular that the image of it could also be found on the flip side of a 500 Rupee Note Some of his other key works are the Triumph of Labour at Marina beach in Chennai and the Martyr’s Memorial in Patna 

Debi Prasad went on to teach at the Government College of Fine Arts in Chennai and in turn, influenced eminent artists like Paritosh Sen, Prodosh Das Gupta and so on In 1954 he was appointed the founding chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in the year 1958 Debi Prasad Roy Chowdhury passed away in the year 1975 in Madras