Sunil Das was born in 1939 in Calcutta He graduated from the Calcutta Government College of Art in 1959 In 1961 he won a French government scholarship to study at L’Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts He is widely recognised for his bull, horse and women series His characters have a kind of structure and rigidity that you would typically see in sculpture and etchings of graphic art His human figures are almost surreal, tantalising eyes for example He executes his works in a soft brown, mauve and white in the background to bring to the front the drama of life This was influenced by his studies of sculpture at Santiniketan, Kolkata Das has exhibited widely in Dusseldorf, Basel, Zurich, Hamburg, New York, Calcutta, Bombay and New Delhi The Government of India conferred upon him the Padma Shri in 2014 He is also the only artist to have won a National Award, Shiromani Kala Puraskar, while still an undergraduate at the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata Das lives and works in Calcutta