Revisiting a pioneering Nepali artist

An exhibition in New York brings Lain Singh Bangdel’s art to a new audience.

Lain Singh Bangdel’s reputation remains alive in Nepal even two decades after his death. The outlines of his life and career are well known. Born in Darjeeling, Bangdel was trained at the Government School of Art and Craft in Calcutta in the early 1940s and spent several years in European artistic circles following his enrolment at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1952. He famously came to Nepal in 1961 at the personal invitation of King Mahendra, who wanted him to help revitalise the cultural sphere, as part of the Panchayat regime’s broader nation-building enterprise.