Ganesh Haloi was born in 1936 in Jamalpur, now, Bangladesh.
Haloi has always been in pursuit of an artistic idiom that adequately transforms his personally perceived spaces of existence into visual spaces in art. Conjuring up emotional structures & contours in tidy multi-hued colour patches in diverse semi-geometric shapes-the viewer never misses the most abstract of his images where there is a subtext of spaces inwardly interlinking natural & pictorial forms.
This is because the shapes, forms & colours in all their sensuous & spiritual dimensions are deeply ingrained in his sensitive mind that shaped quite early in his life in the open spaces under the blue sky,in the endless stretches of paddy fields & in the vast expanses of water bodies in riverine East Bengal.
Haloi's work contain depths beyond the abstracted forms of quiet green-blues,sienna-rust & yellow-greys. Beneath the abstractional brown or smudging are cornices,arches,gateways-remnants of architectural structures,layers & layers under the surface. Memories of his childhood & travels appear only to disappear under the gouache-washed forms & you wonder if those ridged abbreviated pillars & portals are a sleight of hand or a deliberate illusion of architectural splendours corroded to leave behind a wisp of a minaret here & the whisper of an arch there.
By the mid seventies, Haloi was known for his capability of creating an ordinary landscape which evoked metaphysical essences. But gradually, the realistic landscapes transformed to non-representational landscapes. He depicted nature that goes beyond the visual documentation in the most poetic manner. Even though it is abstract, Haloi’s works and his motifs have precise associations with the artist’s psyche, his experiences and the upheavals that have shaped him and his point of view. These innerscapes reflected his introverted and philosophical temperament. His works are marked with lyricism and show his significant contribution to building up of this abstract trend in contemporary Indian art.
