Sumantra Sengupta

Sumantra Sengupta was a Professor and the Founding Head of Arts, Design and Performance, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, India till 2022. He was a full-time artist and also a visiting faculty and jury member at NIFT, Mumbai and Bangalore, and a visiting faculty member in Raffle Design in Mumbai. Prior to his career in academia, he worked as a freelance designer and artist, mainly involved in book design, theatre set design, graphic design, installation art, etc., from 2000 to 2004.
In 1993, he worked as a senior designer at NDTV, a reputed television channel in Asia, where he was involved in doing virtual/real set design, computer graphics, animation etc. Apart from these, he was also a part of many exhibitions, solos, and triennials, including a solo exhibition in New Delhi in LTG Gallery (1993), The Realist in Jahangir Art Gallery, Mumbai (1993); solo exhibition at Birmingham City University, England on the commemoration of World War I, and India's participation (2019); solo exhibition at Alliance Francaise, Hyderabad (2020) to name a few.
He has worked with slum children in Mangolpuri, Delhi and created mural paintings on walls along with slum children and lived with them as a part of a project with Sahamat organization which was a part of Apnautsav in 1992. He has created public art in form of 200 feet by 12 feet mural, for the public procession on the first death anniversary of Safdar Hashmi and was a part of a site-specific installation with rock band “Indian Ocean” in the British Council, New Delhi, 2002.
He is also a part of Theatre and Film Production Design. He has worked as a creative/aesthetic director with Rituparna Ghosh for his Bengali film called Doshor which was the official entry to the Cannes Film Festival, 2007 and won awards at the New York Film Festival in 2007, Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards, National Film Award - Special Jury Award. He has also designed theatre sets for renowned theatre director Anamika Haksar for a production called Viy written by Nikolai Gogol, 1992, and Rajdarshan, 2000. He is himself trained in vocal music in folk, Sufi, and Faquiri songs from India and has learned theatre from renowned teacher and theatre director Barry John.
He has a 5-year diploma in Fine Arts from the Government College of Arts (1980) and a 2-year Post Diploma in Painting from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan (1983).