He completed his education at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw in 1958 and Delhi Polytechnic, New Delhi in 1956. He was a member of the Communist Party of India in the mid-’50s and worked as a journalist and art critic for the Left magazines. Experience: "The Significance of the Traditional Numen in Contemporary Art", a project that he worked on, won him the Nehru Fellowship. He served as a member of the International Jury at the Sao Paolo Biennale and was also a trustee at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. As a solo artist, he put up about 31 shows and participated in several national as well as international exhibitions. In 1981, he set up the art museum "Roopanker" at the Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal. He served as the director of the institute till 1990.