Ramgopal Vijayvargiya

Born in Baler, Rajasthan in 1905, Ramgopal Vijayvargiya was allured to art at a very early age. A wandering ascetic introduced him to the basic principles of drawing. After his father found out about his passion for painting, Vijayvargiya's father encouraged him to pursue his academics from the Maharaja School of Arts and Crafts, where he was under the tutelage of famous Bengal revivalist Shailendranath De. At the age of 17 Ramgopal held his debut solo show at the Fine Arts and Crafts Society in Kolkata. A year later, Ramgopal showed such potential that he was granted direct promotion into the final year of his five-year course at the college and graduated within eight months. Soon thereafter Ramgopal took up a drawing teacher's job, but he couldn't manage that for more than a year. By the time Ramgopal was 30, he had become an established name in the art world, and nearly one thousand of his paintings had already been sold.