"In a big city, I feel the vibration of an abstraction, and the colors Red, Blue, Brown, Black and Olive Green come alive in a meaningful way."

Born in 1960 at Midnapore in West Bengal, Somenath Maity studied Fine Arts at the College of Visual Arts in Kolkatta under the guidance of the senior and eminent Bengali artist, Shuvaprassana. After obtaining his degree here, Maity went on to receive a diploma in Fine Arts from the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship, also in Kolkatta.

Somenath Maity is self-professedly an artist of urban environments and cultures. Called avant-garde and unconventional for his landscapes, this artist’s favourite occupation is to find the inner beauty that exists in every big city and that most people don’t see or bother to look for, and then express it in his abstract oils on canvas. Maity builds up his paintings, all aptly titled "structure", one brush stroke at a time, almost as an architect would work on a blueprint for a building.

Maity’s colors and textures are strong, bringing to the forefront the life of the urban sprawls that he paints, and investing them with a force that works beyond the life of their inhabitants, keeping them ticking no matter who comes or goes, lives or dies.

Recognized today as one of Bengal's important new emerging painters, Maity has already exhibited his works at many major Indian and European galleries. He has won awards and scholarships from most of the major Indian fine art institutions, including the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, the Birla Academy and the IAAI. With several one-man exhibitions in India and abroad to his credit, including shows in Germany Sweden and the United Kingdom, his paintings also enjoy pride of place in prestigious permanent collections like those of the National Gallery of Modern Art and the Lalit Kala Academy in New Delhi, the Fukuoka Museum in Japan and also in several corporate and private collections all over the world.

Somenath Maity lives and works in Gopalpur, West Bengal.