G. Kamble

Career Movie posters Kamble could not pursue traditional technical education in arts due to financial constraints and started learning poster painting in Kolhapur at the Hans talkies and as an unpaid intern at the Cinetone studios. He moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) in the 1930s to start working in film industry. He received assignments from movie studios to paint promotional posters. In the beginning he painted movie posters for Ranjit Studios, The Bombay Talkies Studios, Gemini Studios (Madras), National Studios, Prabhat Film Company, and the Film City, Mumbai.

V. Shantaram, the foremost film maker of era, invited Kamble to work for his Rajkamal Kalamandir studio.

In the times before TV and radio, movie promotion was highly dependent on the appealing colourful posters by Kamble and his posters were successful and highly appreciated all over India. He was also responsible for painting posters for the iconic Hindi movie Mughal-e-Azam.

Portraits After some time in movie industry, Kamble turned his focus to drawing personal portraits of prominent people. Kamble's portrait of Chhatrapati Shivaji was accepted by the government of Maharashtra as the official portrait in the 1970s, but he received flak from reformer Madhavrao Bagal for asserting that his portrait of Shivaji was based upon a divine vision. His portrait of Shahu of Kolhapur was utilized to recreate the likeness for commemorative postal stamp in 1979.

He painted prominent social reformers and politicians Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Jyotirao Phule, Mahatma Gandhi, B. R. Ambedkar, JFK, Rabindranath Tagore, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lata Mangeshkar. Subah Ka Tara (1954); Marathi films Shilanganache Sone (1949), Shiva Ramoshi (1951).

Death Kamble died on 21 July 2002.