Tagore's Kala Bhavan turns 100, celebrates a legacy that broke tradition

In the pre-Independence era, artists such as Nandalal Bose, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij gave a distinct identity to Kala Bhavan

On a November afternoon, Shubho Debnath, a first-year student of Master of Fine Arts at Visva Bharati, and his mentor, Amiya Nimai Dhara, are busy fanning a large clay oven outside Kala Bhavan, the university’s fine art school at Santiniketan. A layer of broken terracotta blocks on the top shields the sparks emanating from the smouldering coal inside. What looks like barbecue from the outside is a part of the long process involved in making shellac dolls, a dying folk art from West Bengal. Only a handful of families in West Bengal’s East Medinipore district are today engaged in the