Published on the occasion of the show ?8 Bengal Masters: Miracles of Existence?, this volume explores post-colonial Bengal, and eight eminent modernist artists and their artistic journeys through print, sculpture and painting. Preceded by international figures like Rabindranath Tagore, stimulating cross-cultural contacts with modern European art and a critical exploration into indigenous sensibilities heralded a whole new set of fresh alternative aesthetic possibilities for these artists. Their works reflect a period of intense social and aesthetic transformations with a visible emphasis on the humanistic concerns and existential condition of the newly independent India. The eight artists showcased here redefined the quest for a personal idiom not as a mere stylistic search but as the intimate and mutually transforming dialogue between the individual and the world?both social and natural. From this perspective, this book takes a fresh look at the works of these artists as some of the best examples of the socially-relevant, liberating aesthetics of the post-?40s modern Indian art. Published in association with Akar Prakar, Kolkata. Soumik Nandy Majumdar teaches in the Department of History of Art, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan, where his focus is on Indian Folk and Tribal Art, Indian Traditional Arts, Modern European Art and Chinese and Japanese Art. Majumdar has written for several journals in both English and Bengali.