Rita Datta, the art critic whose perception and promotion of the marginalised folk and tribal styles helped bring them into the mainstream art discourse, passed away in a city hospital on Wednesday after a long illness. She was 74.
Through her articles in The Telegraph, Datta, anadmirer of Jamini Roy,Meera Mukherjee, Somnath Hore and Ganesh Haloi, provided a boost to buddingtalent.
An alumna of Loreto House, Calcutta, Datta was born into a family which owned and published newspapers in English, Bengali and Hindi. She taught history at a south Calcutta school, but it was her writing on art, post-retirement, that fully engaged her imagination.
When she passed away, Datta was a few months away from a major show of CIMA this year that she was expected to cover and which she had been doing for decades.
Datta was the granddaughter of Tushar Kanti Ghosh, the daughter of the late cabinet minister of Bengal, Tarun Kanti Ghosh, and the sister of Tuhin Kanti Ghosh, former president of the INS.
Datta leaves behind her husband Samir Datta, aunts Shukla Goho and Srilekha Bose, brother Tamal Kanti Ghosh, sister Ronita Ghosh and sisters-in-law Subarna Ghosh and Kavita Ghosh.