Born in Kerala in 1960, Jyothi Basu studied Painting at the College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, where he completed his BFA in 1987, followed by a Post Diploma in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M S University, Baroda, in 1991. During the 1980s, Basu created portraits of friends, acquaintances and colleagues, as well as self-portraits. Works such as Chittrabanu (1983) and Yohannan (1986) demonstrate his early interest in the human figure and the expressive possibilities of line and charcoal.

After a hiatus from painting between 1991 and 1998, during which he worked as a set designer for television, Basu returned to his artistic practice with a renewed focus on themes of death and resurrection. Working across charcoal, pastel and oil, among other media, he developed landscapes populated by isolated and often contorted trees, using them as recurring forms through which to explore transformation and regeneration. His landscapes combine desolate spaces with a sense of movement and renewal, reflecting his continued engagement with the human condition.

Basu's first solo exhibition, Healing Properties: V. N. Jyothi Basu's Landscapes of the Self, was held at the Artists' Centre, Mumbai, in 2003. He subsequently participated in exhibitions including Anticipations (2004) and Bombay Boys, associated with Bose Krishnamachari. He was also associated with the Indian Radical Painters and Sculptors Association, which emerged in Baroda in the late 1980s.

Basu's paintings move between the tangible and the imagined, using landscapes and recurring natural forms to explore transformation, memory and the human condition. His practice continues to examine the relationship between the individual and the surrounding landscape.