Chittrovanu Mazumdar, born on October 13, 1956, is a prominent contemporary Indian artist with Bengali-Indian and French heritage. Often characterized as a "conceptual artist" and a "post-structuralist," Mazumdar's work defies easy categorization into a single artistic tradition or genre. While he has identified himself as an "expressionist painter," he also resists confining his work to specific labels, preferring instead to let it remain open to interpretation. He believes that art becomes more compelling when it is freed from the limitations of labels, allowing viewers to engage with it based on their own experiences. His diverse body of work spans various media and forms, reflecting his reluctance to be defined by a singular artistic identity.
Born in Paris, Mazumdar spent much of his childhood in Kolkata and a remote rural region of Jharkhand. He was introduced to art by his father, Nirode Mazumdar (1916–1982), a celebrated Indian Modernist painter, and later formalized his training at the Calcutta Government College of Art & Craft. Mazumdar first gained recognition as a painter in the 1980s and 1990s before shifting his focus to installation art in the mid-to-late 1990s. He has frequently collaborated with Seagull Publications on book designs and with Kolkata-based theater groups on performance space design. As of January 2015, he is based primarily in Kolkata and is associated with the 1X1 Gallery in Dubai. His work has been exhibited globally, including in Dubai, Kolkata, London, Mumbai, New Delhi, New York, Palo Alto, Paris, Rome, Singapore, and Salzburg. His paintings are part of the collection at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi and are also held in numerous private collections worldwide.
