The artistes of Calcutta founded a new mode of painting after experimenting thoroughly with modern European art in the fifties. The artistes in the subsequent times, have drawn inspiration from these paintings and further ameliorated them. This trend continues to this day. The 'Calcutta-Group' of artistes is a defunct body. But a veteran artiste of the group, Paritosh Sen has still managed to sustain the attraction of his paintings by introducing current techniques in them. He is not even hesitant to revert to the Cubist norms of painting. Incidentally, cubism is the style in art in which objects are represented by juxtaposed geometrical figures. Ace artistes with refined tastes like Satyen Ghosal or Chintamoni Kar who strongly believe in individualism, are working assiduously. Again, the 'neo-Bengal' mode of painting as introduced by Abanindranath, is nicely manifested in the paintings of Maniklal Bandopaddhaya, Dhirendranath Brahma, Ramananda Bandopaddhaya etc. This trend has been enriched and developed in the recent past by Dipen Basu in his paintings of Goddess Durga and excerpts from the life of Sri Chaitanya. The sculptor-artiste Sunil Pal has also done some commendable works following this mode of painting.
However, the contemporary paintings today, have been mostly influenced by the members of 'The Society of Contemporary Artistes'. In the early sixties, this Society was founded by distinguished artistes like Nikhil Biswas, Prakash Karmakar, Bijan Chowdhury, Arun Basu, Sanat Kar, Shyamal Dutta Gupta, Kamala Chowdhury etc. But this association dissipated within a couple of years. After the split, Nikhil Biswas, Bijan Chowdhury and Prakash Karmakar founded another association and named it 'Calcutta Painters'. Notable painters like Robin Mondol, Gopal Sanyal, Mahim Rudra and several other artistes joined this association. The premature death of Nikhil Biswas was an irreparable loss for this association and for the world of paintings in Calcutta. However, it goes without saying that several artistes who never belonged to this association have also been performing with dexterity. The names of Ganesh Haloi, Ganesh Pain etc. deserve special mention in this regard.