Delhi based figurative painter Arup Das was a noted muralist. The text of his paintings was always informed by a keen awareness of man's socio-historical being. He had enviable skill in handling both aqueous medium and oil, and was particularly happy and inventive when working in mixed media. His human figuration, expressively stylised, had something monumental about it even when painted in small format. Although from the illusionist spatial recession, the pictorial space in his paintings interpreted the figures in terms of fine overlaps or colours in a wide range of tones.
Born in West Bengal in 1927, Arup Das graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts in Calcutta. Since the late ’50s he has been living and working in New Delhi. During 1960-68, he was a member of the council of the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, and went to study in the UK on a British Council fellowship in 1972. In 1966 he was commissioned to do a mural for the Indian Exhibition organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in New Delhi. Next year, he did another mural for the Indian pavilion in the 'Expo-67' in Canada. Since his first solo show in 1954 at the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society in New Delhi, he had 22 solo shows in India and abroad till the year 1994, which included two shows in Japan, London (1972) and Montreal (1 97 8). From 1961 to 1993, he participated in 24 important group shows in lndia and Sao Paolo (1961), Brazil and other Latin American countries (1965) Rumania and Poland (1973), Yugoslavia, Brussels and Warsaw (1974), Tehran, Budapest, Damascus, Prague and Sofia (1979), and West Germany (1993). A recipient of the National Award of 1957 from the Lalit Kala Akademi, he won prizes at All India Art Exhibitions of the AIFACS in 1954 and the President's Silver Plaque in 1957. His works are in the collections of the National Gallery of Modem Art, New Delhi, Museum of Modem Art, Punjab, Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, Punjab University, and in the private collections in New York, Warsaw, Prague, Cairo, Russia, Japan, France, U.K., Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Hungary and Bulgaria.

Arup Das passed away in 2004.