Mitu Basu

She Lived the World to Understand Her Canvas

She began at Kitasu — under her brother Bimal Basu and his partner, one of the most respected art director partnerships of their time — while simultaneously copywriting under the legendary Larry Grant. Visual thinking and the precision of language, both at once, from the very beginning.

Publishing followed. Nine years running her own design studio followed that. Then a decade as General Manager Corporate Communications at The Leela Group of Hotels — holding PR, design, marketing and publishing simultaneously.

Each decade added something the next would need. Each discipline left a skill she would one day give to artists.

Like Edward de Bono, she always chose lateral over linear. At every decade she reinvented herself — not out of restlessness, but out of conviction. A life lived in one lane is a life half lived.

Travel Enriched Her Canvas

Beyond every classroom and every boardroom, travel has always been her most formative teacher. Cultures, continents, communities — the nectar the artist in her thrives on.

It is why the Dolna Art residency programme was never an afterthought. It was a belief made into a structure. Because an artist who has only ever seen their own sky can only ever paint it.

Then Santiniketan Happened. And Nothing Was the Same.

Every skill was in place.
Every reason to wait had run out.

She went to Santiniketan on a three-month study leave. She arrived to refresh. She left knowing she could never go back to the corporate world.

Around her were artists of extraordinary ability — and she could see, with the clarity of someone who had spent decades building systems, exactly what was missing. The network. The bridge. The articulation between talent and opportunity.

She had all of it.

The Leela was in a critical phase of expansion. She stayed three more years to see it through. In 2010 she was ready. Dolna was founded.

Why She Named It After a Swing

Subrata Bhowmik, a designer friend, asked what she wished to do. Being a visual thinker, she answered in an image.

“I see artists sit on my swing to get that push to fly high.”

— Mitu Basu

Call it Dolna, he said. The swing in Bengali. And then she told him — coincidentally, it is also my late mother's name. The woman who taught her that living itself is art.

With her blessings, he designed the logo. The upward arc. The red spot — taken from her own forehead. Her bindi. Her identity. Her stamp on everything that followed.

Dolna was not born in a boardroom.
It was born in a conversation about a swing, a mother,
and what it truly means to give someone the push that changes everything.

An Address Born From a Promise.

Built on the belief that art must meet people where they are, Dolna Art moved beyond traditional galleries — into hotels, clubs, malls, colleges and courtyards. Live painting at every event. Whether through government collaboration, corporate partnership or Dolna funded — she made sure the artist never paid. Flights, stays, residencies, transport. The responsibility of funding was always hers to carry. Never theirs.

Over fifteen years and more than 250 exhibitions she built an address that places the living Indian artist at its centre.

When Everything Stopped, She Listened

Then she paused. Two years.
Not a retreat. A reckoning.

Years of active participation had given her an intimate understanding of where the system was failing the artist. The infrastructure gaps. The structural imbalances. The points of pain she had witnessed from both sides — as an artist and as a curator. She had lived them. Now she sat with them deliberately.

Two things emerged from that stillness.

The first — a book. Everything she had learned, built and lived, distilled into a handbook every Indian artist could use.

The second — an evolution. Dolna.in became Dolna Art. A name with art built into its identity. A startup with wider reach, a sharper focus and a model rebuilt from the ground up to serve the living artist more completely than ever before.

From Visible to Viable

India has a recorded 55 million active artists. Millions more unrecorded. An ancient artistic heritage stretching back centuries. And yet less than one percent of the global art market.

She started writing.

Visible to Viable — a marketing handbook for every Indian artist. Twelve chapters. Every tool an artist needs — from positioning and branding to grants and residencies. It contained everything she learned, experienced and lived.

Art colleges teach you how to make art. This book will show you what to do with it when you walk out of the gate.

India Rising Series 2010

The pause over, in 2026, Dolna Art launches India Rising — a year-long series celebrating Indian artists across every discipline, tradition, and geography. Dolna Art in its new avatar: Built to place the living Indian artist at its centre.

Blind jury selection — unsigned work evaluated entirely on merit. 85% of every sale goes directly to the artist. Always. Transparent. Non-negotiable. An address where artists are discovered, nurtured, and respected.

The inaugural event — The Blank Canvas.
The proof and the instruction manual arriving together.

Finally The Woman, the Artist and the Founder Met

To many, a life lived across advertising, design, publishing, communications, curation, writing and art may seem scattered.

But she sees every pearl of experience converge by design. Each one quietly preparing her for the moment she would need all of it at once. The moment is now.

The convergence for Mitu is in the all-new avatar of Dolna Art, the next chapter. Dolna Art — an address built for the living artist. Where every work is chosen on merit alone, every artist retains direct contact with the collector; fair economics, not a promise but a structure. Folk, traditional, modern and contemporary on the same stage. Every genre equal. Every voice heard.

India Rising Series 2026 is the declaration. The Blank Canvas is the first stroke.
Sixteen years in the making. Just getting started.

Dolna Art is that belief. Made real.