“I was forced by circumstances to turn my brush into as sharp a weapon as I could make it."
Chittaprosad quoted in Prodyot Ghosh, Chittaprosad: A Doyen of Art-World
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During the 1943-44 Bengal famine, he was sent to Midnapore as a journalist for the CPI, travelling with fellow artist Zainul Abedin and photographer Sunil Janah. He documented his experience of travelling through the Midnapur district, mainly on foot, in a series of drawings and sketches, accompanied by notes in Bengali and English. These sketches were published in Hungry Bengal - A Tour Through Midnapur District in November 1943; copies of which were destroyed by the British.
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Other drawings, along with text, were reproduced in the CPI's official publication, People's War and People's Age, as early as August 1943.
Several of these work,s along with archive material relating to the famine, were exhibited at Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. Here is a link to a fascinating essay on the famine by Natasha Ginwala titled So Many Hungers.
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Chittaprosad, Call for Peace, 1952, linocut on paper, 30.5 x 29.6 cm. Photo © National Gallery Prague, 2019
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In 1948 Chittaprosad distanced himself from the Communist Party and began to engage in peace building and education. In the early 1950s he set up a puppet theatre - Khelaghar - with the help of František Salaba, that staged marionette plays for children living in Mumbai's poorest neighbourhoods. The late 1950s saw him spend an increasing amount of time in Czechoslovakia. His relationships there and later life are extremely well documented by Simone Wille in her essay titled A Transnational Socialist Solidarity, Chittaprosad's Prague Connection, published the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.
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Photograph by M. Krása, date unknown. As inscribed on the back, we see Chittaprosad in the middle and M. F. Husain on the right. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Helena Bonušová and the Krása family.
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