Das returned to India after training in Paris, and travels that included Madrid. While still at the Government College of Art & Craft in Calcutta, he became known for his drawings of horses in ink, charcoal, pastel and conte, worked with a vivacity that brought the animal to life on the page — speeding, grazing, resting, thoughtful — capturing it in its various moods and stances. He later engaged with the bull as a subject too, after a visit to Madrid, with a deep and continued interest. His work was not limited to these two subjects: throughout his life, Das covered a wide range of subjects reflecting his concerns and connections with the world, in India and abroad.
Das encountered the bull while on a trip to Spain in 1962.
Das travelled often, and Paris and Madrid shaped him in different ways. Paris was where he trained and took part in the city's cultural life; Madrid was where he witnessed bull-fighting for the first time. Paris also moved him back and forth in time: the Louvre introduced him to Renaissance art and to the Romantics, Delacroix and Francisco de Goya, while contemporary galleries exposed him to current trends and the avant-garde positions of modern and post-modern artists. Over the years, Das worked across different artistic approaches without settling into a single fixed direction. Horses and bulls remained his recurring subjects, but he stayed open to the many other things that drew his attention, visually and socially.
Horse by Sunil Das, 1998.
F.N. Souza wrote about Das in 1985: “Sunil Das is a painter of tomorrow working today…his paintings are often about death and horror. But they are not illustrations or Grand Guignol.”
Das once said: “I work with my whole body, all my senses. I use any medium that appeals to me: thread, lac, gauze, nails, burnt plastic, vegetable dyes. I am unorthodox. I wish to break barriers.”
As age caught up, Das moved towards abstraction and rarely painted horses, a subject he had returned to for years. Asked why, he said: “Capturing a stallion on paper was difficult, as it never stood still. I do not draw horses anymore, I have conquered them. But my current drawings retain that energy, the confidence that I had in myself.”
Das carved out a place for himself in India's developing contemporary art scene. His work combined discipline with a readiness to experiment, and he continued to develop it throughout his career.
Vinayak Pasricha.