Mukul Dey Biography 
Mukul Chandra Dey, shortly known as Mukul Dey was a pioneer of drypoint-etching in India in the 20th century. He was the first Indian to travel abroad for the purpose of studying printmaking as an art. A student of Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan School during the early years (1906-1912), he gave significant contributions to drypoint-etching during 20th century. His younger brother, Manishi Dey was also an accomplished painter. Mukul Dey was also the illustrator for many book projects.
He was born on 23 July 1895 in Sridharkhola, Bengal of British India. He received his initial training at Rabindranath Tagore’s Santiniketan and later travelled abroad to learn the technique of etching. He reached America from Japan in 1916 to learn this art under James Blanding Sloane and Bertha Jaques in Chicago. Dey remained a life-member of Chicago Society of Etchers and returned to India in 1917. Once returned, he concentrated on creating etchings as a fine art. To earn a living, he created portrait drawings of the rich and famous, and turned these into etchings.
In 1920 again he travelled abroad to learn etching and engraving under Frank Short and Muirhead Bone. He studied at both the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art in London. Later he met Polish sculptor Stanislaw Szukalski in US, which proved to be the turning point of his career. He impressed Szukalski by his works and expressed his desire to venture into Paris, to "finish his study". But Szukalski advised him to go to Europe only when he has enough belief in himself to look upon European Decadence with contempt and choose the best, as Szukalski believed that Paris was a factory for the "brainwashing of the public of every nation". Thus Mukul returned back to Shantiniketan and continued with his work. In 1928, Dey was appointed the first Indian Principal of the Government School of Art, Kolkata.
Published: N/A
Updated: January 08, 2014
