Bhau Samarth was born on 14 March 1928 in a village named Lakhni in Bhandara district of Maharashtra. He was very fond of painting since childhood. He started drawing at the age of six and used to draw in class whenever he got a chance. His teacher asked him to write an article on the Taj Mahal, but he drew a picture of the Taj Mahal.
The examiner gave him zero marks. He used to go from door to door to paint on festive occasions. Bhau was a commerce student but his teacher inspired him towards painting after seeing him drawing caricatures on notebooks.
His mother died when he was 14. He worked as a master. He studied in the higher class in the art school in Nagpur and taught the children of the younger class. Gradually he became famous as a painter and his paintings also started getting published.
When his cartoons were published in newspapers in 1946, his friends sent an album of his drawings to America. From there Bhau got financial assistance and his education progressed. In 1951, he organized his first exhibition in his village.
At the same time, he went to Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay to get a higher education in art. During his G.D.Art studies in 1955, he used to make Shabih. He had a great shortage of illustration material.
In 1951, he created a landscape by pasting the colored objects in the matchbox on wood. The then Army Chief General K.M. Cariappa came to the exhibition. He looked at that picture for twenty minutes and bought it. This news was published all over the country.
He was considered a brilliant student at J.J. School. During the examination, he got so engrossed in drawing that he lost track of time and failed. But when the painting was completed, it was considered excellent and even his teachers praised him. In 1956, Bhau passed the G.D. Art and Fine Art examination.
From 1960 he started organizing exhibitions in various cities of Maharashtra. He was also acquainted with many litterateurs and Khwaja Ahmed Abbas, Ghulam Ali, and Krishna Chander were present at his Nagpur exhibition in 1960.
Before this, around 1958-5g, Bhau used to make paintings without colors and brushes and he was not in a position to buy canvas. In 1950, he made a portrait of Gandhiji in peanut shells which was seen by the Governor and ministers of Maharashtra. Bhau received praise and his painting was also sold. From then onwards he started gaining fame.
From 1960 he held exhibitions in many cities of India like Nagpur, Bombay, Bhopal, Calcutta, Indore, etc. He taught for twenty years and held many positions in All India Institutions and public institutions of Maharashtra Government. The Maharashtra government honored him with many awards and the title of Kalacharya.
Bhau made paintings from various subjects like portrait, landscape, still life, nude, plain, and colorful. His work is both form-based and abstract. Bhau has mostly given place to the simple forms of Indian life in his art. He has also done many experiments in art and has also made paintings on music and constellations.
They gave more importance to colors rather than shapes. In his paintings, he has been using a variety of materials like water-colour, oil-colour, pastel, waste paper, turmeric-lime, wood waste, peels, etc. Yellow and red colors predominate in his paintings. He has created more than one and a half lakh drawings, two thousand water color paintings, and more than two and a half thousand oil paintings.
He used more dark colors and also used a knife to apply them. He did not like the smooth background. In the rough land, they felt at ease with modern life. He did not like commercialism in art and sometimes, in times of financial crisis, he would spend several days with his wife and children just drinking water.
He was neither in favor of the capitals of painting nor of excessive intellectualism in art. He was in favor of connecting art with the masses and he also opposed the political sycophancy of Hussain. His art is popular and popular.
While staying in touch with progressive litterateurs, he established the Progressive Artists Association in Madhya Pradesh. He was more in favor of printing pictures in small newspapers and magazines where there was no facility to print color pictures, hence he became more famous as a sketch painter. He has done up to 80 sketches in one night.
