Foundation Studio
Pencil, charcoal, watercolour and clay — the slow building of the eye and the hand, one sketchbook page at a time, two afternoons a week.
Programme Dates →
Discipline 03 — Fine Arts
Fine Arts
Painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics in a north-lit hall — beside the oldest visual traditions of the Ganges valley.
The Discipline
Apply to the Fine Arts Discipline →
A thousand years of images, one studio
The region around Bhagalpur has painted for nearly a thousand years — from the palm-leaf manuscripts of Vikramashila to the folk walls of the countryside. The Fine Arts discipline at the Citadel teaches students to join that long line, not by imitating it, but by learning its foundations and then finding a voice entirely their own.
The department occupies a north-lit painting hall with a ceramics kiln, a printmaking bench and a sculpture court. Drawing is taught daily — life, still life, the river, the market — because observation is the first craft of every artist. Each winter the hall becomes a public gallery, and the student exhibition is open to the whole district.
Students prepare portfolios for the country's leading art colleges — the College of Art Delhi, Kala Bhavana Santiniketan and the Faculty of Fine Arts Baroda — and each year Citadel students exhibit at the district youth art festival.
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Works in the Annual Exhibition
The Programmes
Three ways to study with us
Fine Arts at the Citadel runs from Class VI to Class XII — with a plein-air summer school open to every school in the district.
Senior Programme
Oil painting, printmaking, sculpture and ceramics, with a personal portfolio and a public showing each winter in the north-lit hall.
Programme Dates →
Plein-Air Summer School
Four weeks painting the river, the ghats and the loom lanes of the Silk City — ending in an open-air exhibition on the amphitheatre lawn.
Programme Dates →
Curriculum
What you will learn
- Drawing & observation — the daily discipline of the sketchbook, from life and from memory
- Painting — watercolour, gouache, acrylic and oils, ground and mixed by hand
- Printmaking & ceramics — lino-block, etching, and the wheel and kiln
- Art history of the valley — Pala manuscripts, folk walls and the Indian moderns
- Portfolio & exhibition practice — from first sketch to a hung, lit, public show
The hall stays open for senior students until six each evening, and the department runs the district's only children's printmaking bench — donated by our alumni.
From the Studio
Recent work from the studios
A glimpse of the studio's latest — see the full gallery on the Student Work page.
Join the Discipline
The hall is lit. The easels are waiting.
Places in the Senior Programme are limited to sixteen students per year, and the plein-air summer school fills by April. Begin your application — or come and paint with us for an afternoon.