Somalal Shah Biography 
Somalal Shah was an ace painter and art teacher from Gujarat, who has been awarded with Ranjitram Suvarna Chandrak in 1949, the highest literary award in Gujarati literature named after renowned Gujarati writer Ranjitram Mehta. He was also a recipient of Ravishankar Raval State Award for Arts by the Government of Gujarat, apart from many other honours. This artist is known for implementing European techniques on Indian subjects, apart from his styles of Indian miniature paintings and the Bengal revivalist movement. He spent more than three decades in Saurastra where he completely dedicated to art. No other artist has painted the day-day-day life of Saurastra in such abundance. He adopted Wash technique, which became his signature style. Poet Prahlad Parekh called his works ‘poetry in painting’.
Shah was born to a lower-middle class family in Kapadvanj, Gujarat in the year 1905. His father was a shop keeper. He briefly studied at college at Ahmedabad and Baroda, though didn’t complete his studies. His passion to art prompted him to join Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1926 followed by Abanindranath Tagore’s Indian Society of Oriental Art in Kolkata. After studies he joined Dakshinamurti as an arts teacher. Rang Rekha in 1934-35 marked his illustrious career as an artist and was able to impress royal kings within a short interval. He left Bhavnagar in 1939 after gaining attention as a painter and taught at a couple of schools. He then taught Arts at Alfred High School for two decades as requested by royal members.
As a painter, he was noticed for using light oil colour strokes. As an artist his majority life time was spent at Saurastra, where he painted the rural life and culture of Saurastra for more than two decades. He has also illustrated his paintings to tell the cultural life and birds of this region. His superb water colours and sketches itself showed a discipline, that’s quite rare among artists nowadays. In the pre-independent era, where art belonged to the elite sectors of the society, he brought the art to common man mind and his minute records have now become documents of history to learn how people lived in not too distant a past. Kanu Desai, Rasiklal Parikh, Yagneshwar Shukla and Chhaganlal Jadav were his contemporaries. He passed away in 1994.
Published: N/A
Updated: March 06, 2016
