Sanat Kar, an eminent figure in Indian art and doyen in the field of printmaking, passed away early on Monday at his Santiniketan home.

He was 88.

Sources close to Kar’s family said the veteran artist was admitted to the varsity’s Pearson Memorial Hospital after he suffered a heart attack on December 24. He returned home two days ago and passed away early on Monday.

Kar was born in 1935. After passing out of the Government College of Arts and Crafts, he joined the graphics (printmaking) department of Visva-Bharati’s Kala-Bhavana as a teacher in 1974. He retired in 1995 as principal of the varsity’s institute of fine arts.

Condoling Kar’s death, R.Siva Kumar, an eminent art historian in the country, wrote on his social media handle about the artist’s contribution to the fine arts.

“An artist who inherited the imaginative world of the Bengal school and created prints and paintings that oscillated between the lyrical and the occasionally unsettling will be remembered for his experiments in intaglio printmaking. Since 1974, he lived and worked at Santiniketan and was a prominent member of its art community,” the veteran art historian wrote.

Contacted, Kumar said Kar’s demise was a great loss for the art fraternity across the globe.

“Kar introduced many new materials in printmaking technology. He was a passionate teacher at Kala Bhavana,” said Kumar.

Kar was also the founder member and secretary of Artists’ Circle, Calcutta, and Society for Contemporary Artists.

He received the International Printmaking Award, West Bengal State Lalit Kala Akademi Award and the Gagan-Aban award of Visva-Bharati.

Kar’s body was taken to the Kala Bhavana campus on Monday where teachers, alumni and students paid their last tributes.

“He loved the company of his students,” said Sunanda Sanyal, an alumna of Kala Bhavana.