Haren Das maintained a low profile despite his immense contribution to the development of modern Indian printmaking. As a result, he remained unsung all through his life. A book on the seminal role that as a major art medium was much awaited. I thank DAG for planning and publishing this book as a homage to Haren Das, and Dr. Paula Sengupta for locating his place in art history by tracing the myriads of his creative pursuits.

Haren Das took to printmaking as his sole medium of artistic expression when the others saw it as a subsidiary to painting and as an a.!ternative way of creating art; none too as a major art medium. Artists frequented shunted from painting to printmaking, paying less attention to printmaking though. Until the end of the 1960s, there were no viable art market in India and there were virtually no takers for prints, albeit printmaking involved a great deal of artistic merit and mechanical know-how. A perfect print exalts both artistic bravura and technical excellence. Needless to say that the prints made by Haren Das are paradigmatic both technically and artistically. He never forgot that he was an artist who also had the responsibitity as a teacher for quite a long period, being the only one teaching printmaking in a major, art institution. There was a time when he was the only artist in Kolkata who pursued printmaking as his only mode of artistic expression.