Somnath Hore

Hore developed the pulp-print technique, a unique printmaking process that uses paper pulp to create textured impressions, first employed in his Wounds series, which remains a landmark in Indian graphic arts.

His artistic training included tutelage under Haren Das at the Government College of Art and Craft in Calcutta, connecting Hore to a lineage of printmakers deeply engaged with social themes.

In the 1940s, Hore’s early drawings for the Communist Party’s publications fused art and political propaganda, using linocuts and woodcuts to visually chronicle the Tebhaga movement and famine.

Somnath Hore redefined Indian printmaking by inventing new techniques that conveyed raw human suffering, influencing generations of artists at institutions like Kala Bhavan and Delhi Polytechnic. His visual documentation of political upheavals like the Bengal famine and Tebhaga movement preserved critical historical moments in public memory through art. Posthumously, his works continue to challenge and inspire discourse around art’s role in socio-political activism.