Born on the banks of the Brahmaputra in Jamalpur, Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh in 1936, Ganesh Haloi moved to Kolkata in 1950 following the partition of India. The trauma of the uprooting left its mark on his work as it did on some other painters of his generation.

He graduated from Government College of Art & Craft Kolkata in 1956 and joined Archaeological Survey of India as a Senior Artist, to make replicas of Ajanta murals. Seven years later,Ganesh Haloi returned to Calcutta. From 1963 until his retirement, he taught at the Government College of Art and Crafts. He has been a Member of The Society of Contemporary Artists, Calcutta since 1971.

Ganesh Haloi’s art has evolved through a series of transactions from pure landscape to the innerscapes. He has a very strong sense of oneness with nature, especially landscape, one of his deepest source of inspiration. He merge with the landscape that he loses his own identity; there is no sense of alienation for him. “My feelings and affection are here. The mountains, the people playing folk songs on the banks, I do not think it is something separate from me. I am not apart from the landscape”, he says.