Mastering the swirl: The graphic art of Satyajit Ray

Before the movies, the awards and the legend, Ray was a graphic artist, creating book covers, children's illustrations and a range of unusually evocative advertisements for print. Take a look alongside at the families he sketched in intricate detail; the woman haunted by hair-loss. His love affair with the storyboard never really ended. Through his years as a filmmaker, the sketches always came first, even before the script

- Shahim Sheikh

Rather Panchali, Charu-lata, Shatranj ke Khilari...

We know Satyajit Ray for his films, with their tender portrayals of the vagaries of life, explorations of class and power, and masterful use of natural light. These were movies that marked a turning point in India, birthing a parallel cinematic movement in the 1950s.

But moving images are not Ray's only legacy. He set out, in fact, wanting to be a commercial artist. After graduating in Economics from Presidency College in Calcutta, he enlisted at Santiniketan, where he studied fine art for two years (1940-42), under masters such as Nandalal Bose and Benode Behari Mukherjee.

At 22, he began his artistic career with work that is considered seminal (if frequently forgotten by the mainstream) in a range of areas: graphic design, advertising, painting (and of course storytelling).

His first job, in 1943, was at the Calcutta offices of the British advertising agency DJ Keymer; Ray was hired as a junior illustrator. A rampant creativity would be unleashed here, under the agency's art director Annada Munshi, a pioneer in Indian advertising.

These were the final years of the freedom struggle. As Indian-made products sought to reflect the revolution, and the pride of being Indian, a new aesthetic was being born. It incorporated folk art styles, Indian motifs, and depicted the ordinary urban Indian.

To see what Ray did with this aesthetic, turn to the illustrations he created (displayed alongside) for a 1949 campaign for ICI's anti-malaria medicine, Paludrine.