Born in 1936 in Srinagar, Kashmir, Ratan Parimoo is one of India’s leading art historians as well as an accomplished painter and teacher. Beyond his post at M.S. University, Baroda, as a professor of Art History and Aesthetics and the dean of the department for twenty five years, Parimoo has been shaping modern art discourse in the country since he was a young man. In 1956, he cofounded the Baroda Group of Artists with peers including G.R. Santosh, K.G. Subramanyan, Shanti Dave, N.S. Bendre, and Jyoti Bhatt, to expand on the postcolonial aesthetics piloted in Santiniketan the previous decade and evolve the meaning of contemporary art in India by integrating living traditions with modern techniques.

He was the head of the Department of Art History and Aesthetics at the M S University (1966-91) and carried through his tenure a vision of the discipline as being at the juncture of many allied but somewhat alienated fields. His training in painting and emphasis on the inter-relationship of the arts, history, theories and research made his teaching unparalleled.