The decade of the twenties contributed immensely to the blossoming of paintings in Calcutta. The Indian Society of Oriental Art was very active in the city during this period. The period was also marked by the works of creative maestros like Abanindranath and Kshitindranath. But a void was clearly felt. That magic touch of Neo-Bengal mode of art had virtually gone to ShantiNiketan with Nandalal. Au reste, several distinguished disciples of Abanindranath had spread all over the country as preceptors of art and paintings. Consequently, the Abanindra school of art lost its charisma and value in Calcutta. In the beginning of the twenties, Gaganendranath, the pioneering figure of Neo-Bengal school of painting, came out of the conventional established norms and styles and started to make Cubist paintings. Cubism is the style in art in which objects are represented by juxtaposed geometrical figures. Gaganendranath was elevated to a state of trance through this exquisite art form which blended the hues of light and shade and at times, created a dramatic conflict with a multitude of colours. With a dawn of new awakening and creative zeal, he went on making paintings drawing ideas from fairy tales, epics and even matters relating to spiritual consciousness. He went on with his artistic experiments and by the end of the twentieth century, he was uplifted to a state of objectivity in art and was not merely concerned with the tangible beauty.
Another distinguished artiste of this decade was Jamini Roy. This painter par excellence was adept in the occidental school of art. He had always cherished a desire in his heart to found a different style of painting, which would be aesthetic and original. He was intelligent enough to realize that he would never be able to make paintings like the French or Chinese artistes. Knowing his limitations well, he chose the typical Bengali ambience - life, customs and traditions of Bengal as his themes. So he mastered the techniques of the conventional canvas art of Bengal. This, mingled with his own creative zeal and finesse, was given a highly refined and aesthetic touch which was essentially Bengali. He painted from a gamut of subject, which included excerpts from 'The Ramayana', 'Krishnaleela' etc. Although he acquired the techniques of the conventional canvas-art of Bengal, he always honed his skills by making paintings of children. He also followed the ancient Egyptian and Byzantine modes of painting and mosaic patterns as well.
The versatile genius Rabindranath Tagore manifested his painting skill in the middle of the twenties. Those paintings were exhibited for the first time in the Town Hall in 1931. Mukul Chandra Dey, the newly appointed principal of the Government Art School, arranged for an exhibition of Rabindranath's paintings in the following year. The venue of the exhibition was the Art School itself. This exhibition evoked huge response in Calcutta and Tagore won the hearts of the connoisseurs of art. Rabindranath did not follow any conventional pattern or mode of painting. His exquisite paintings reflected his emancipated soul from all prejudices and set patterns. His inner beauty and sense of aesthetics were nicely revealed in his paintings. However, his paintings were not as refined and as impeccable as his poems and songs. His paintings show bizarre creatures, fierce animals and birds on many occasions. His paintings of feminine entities look very melancholy and pensive. The lonely dejection in such paintings makes them abstract and isolated. However, his paintings of efflorescent sceneries definitely reveal a different jovial artiste at his ecstatic best.