APPENDIX B

Pioneer Biographies
of the Indian Period from 1947

Anup Giri (*1952)

Anup Giri was born 1960 in Kidnapur, West Bengal. He showed early promise as an artist and at age 20 received the "Best of Merit" award at the annual exhibition of his later school, the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship which he attended from 1981 to 1982.

Thoughout the 1980s and 1990s Giri participated in a variety of group and solo exhibitions at New Delhi, Madras, Gangtok, Ranchi and above all Calcutta. He also took part in workshops and art camps all over India, including an art camp 1985 at Port Blair. The artist's growing reputation is reflected in the first exhibition 1992 of his work abroad at Dresden, Stuttgart and Leipzig in Germany and by private connoisseurs seeking out his paintings for their collections in India and abroad. The center of Giri's artistic universe, however, remains firmly rooted in India, especially among tribal populations of the eastern hills and Himalayan mountains as well as among the Andamanese and Nicobarese.

The Anthropological Survey of India is a huge governmental scientific research organization - and the living contradiction to the widely-held (and it must be admitted, too often justified) opinion that state-controlled organizations make up in bureaucracy what they lack in creativity. There are few scientific organizations in the world that could or would appoint an artist to their staff and then give him the task and the necessary artistic freedom to paint the subject of the organization's research. The Survey has done just that by setting him the task of describing with his artist's tools what scientific photography cannot show. 

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Last changed 29 January 2005