Galleri Kaya, serving Dhaka’s art scene for the past 22 years, is celebrating its anniversary with a group art exhibition launched on Friday.

United States ambassador Brent T Christensen opened the exhibition also attended, among others, by senior artist Shahid Kabir and barrister Nihad Kabir. 

The ambassador expressed his admiration for legendary Bangladeshi artists who after studying modern art abroad experimented with the country’s folk art traditions that helped Bangladesh’s art take shape and build its own identity against the backdrop of global art.

The anniversary exhibition displayed 73 artworks of 45 artists in diverse media—oil, acrylic, charcoal, mixed media, ink, pen, pastel, etching, Intaglio, linocut, serigraph, lithograph, woodcut wood engraving, indigenous pigment, watercolor on paper and canvas—carried out in a span of over seven decades, from 1957 and 2026.

Founder of Galleri Kaya artist Goutam Chakraborty said that the anniversary exhibition was curation of works from its collection featuring both eminent and young artists from Bangladesh.

Debdas Chakraborty, Hamiduzzaman Khan, Monirul Islam, Shahabuddin Ahmed, Shahid Kabir, Farida Zaman, Abul Barq Alvi, Bishwajit Goswami, Chandra Shekhar Dey, Goutam Chakraborty, Jamal Ahmed, Abdus Sattar Toufiq, Kamaluddin, Mohammad Eunus, and Shohag Parvez are among the artists featured in the exhibition. 

Several noted artists from India, including Jogen Chowdhury and KG Subramanyan, are also presented at the show.

Galleri Kaya, opened in 2004, organised more than 160 exhibitions along with numerous art trips, camps and workshops.

‘In celebration of this landmark, we carry forward the grace and the grit, the triumphs and the trials—etched into memory and driven by an unwavering love for art and its boundless possibilities,’ said Goutam Chakraborty.

The 15-day exhibition will end on June 26.