MANOJ DUTTA (b.1956 in Kolkata) had no formal training in art. He had exhibited works in Asian Art show, Japan; Contemporary Art Show, South Korea, Contemporary Indian Art Show, Holland, Busan Biennale, Korea; HUDCO Habiart Camp, New Delhi, Artist Camp Max Mueller Bahvan, Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata etc. Participation group shows include: Academy of Fine Arts, Birla Academy, West Bengal State Academy, Kolkata, National Exhibition, Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, Calcutta 300years:Calcutta Through The Eyes of Painters, Birla Academy, Kolkata. Harmony show, Mumbai. Solo show at Gallery Ganesha, New Delhi. Attended camps in India & abroad. His works are in several private and public collections in India and abroad. Lives and works in Kolkata . The patterned precision and polished delicacy of Manoj Dutta’s infinitely appealing visuais, contradict the fact that he has received no formal training in art. The singular strength with which he has concentrated on his chosen passion is however immediately identifiable in the emotional spontaneity and meticulous craftsmanship of his paintings and drawings. Today, a substantial body of his work resides in the National Gallery of Modern Art. Manoj Dutta was only twenty seven years old, when three luminaries of the contemporary Indian art scene – Shyamal Dutta Roy, Bikash Bhattacharyjee and Ganesh Pyne – invited him to join and work with them as a member of the Society of Contemporary Artists. He only summoned up the courage to join the Society a year later in 1983. Today he has forged his own uniquely mellifluous, gracefully orchestrated style to secure his eminence in the Indian art scenario. Manoj Dutta’s art rediscovers and enriches the traditional two dimensional format of ‘Indian-ness’ found in folk art. No exuberance however of the traditional vivid colors play in patterned images across his canvases. Rather, his paintings and pastels bloom with luminous effusions of a few consonant colors, structured into subtle textures, variations and nuances of tone and shade, to enhance his deceptively simple, stylized images. The predominant color with which he elaborates a theme, whether blue, red, violet or ochre enlarges into a fine symphony of depth and shade to frame his images in impeccably conceptualized designs of integrated detail. His delineation of images whether with pen or brush, is similarly simple, fluent and infinitely eloquent. His images may stand out expressively from bare or delicately muted backgrounds, recede artfully behind a vigorous cross-hatching of lines, or even freeze mid-movement into a stylized format. But they are always vivified by a singular ‘mood’, which can by turns be whimsical, humorous, introspective or poignant – whether with nostalgia or with memories of beauty ‘recollected in tranquility’.