[1][2] His notable paintings include The flying scarecrow, Cow herd, Despair and Way to peace, which depicts Mahatma Gandhi with a Hindu and a Muslim child.
Though tragedy struck early, when he lost his father at six-year, and was brought up by his mother, who had penchant for making dolls, which shaped the sculptor in him.
[2] He later studied at Government College of Art & Craft (GCAC), Calcutta, where he was a student of teachers like Percy Brown and J.P. Ganguly.
During this period he has neither subscribed to the Bengal school nor sided with the Victorian academism, but evolved his own individualistic style, which got him noticed[6] The turning point in his career however came in 1929, when he was commissioned by Punjabi firm, Krishna Plaster Works to go to Lahore to make a bust of recently martyred leader, Lala Lajpat Rai, ahead of Lahore Session of Indian National Congress.
After the partition of India, Sanyal and his wife Snelata, a ghazal singer and theatre person, moved to Delhi, where he stayed for the rest of his life.
[3] As an artist working with watercolours and oil paintings, his themes revolved around archetypal human struggles, deeply focussed on the economically deprived.
[16] The Government of India, issued a special postage stamp to commemorate his birth centenary in 2000,[3] while IGNCA, New Delhi in part of its celebrations, of his 100th birthday held a function on 22 April 2001, where an exhibition of tributes by over 170 artistes in various media was opened and a DVD on him along with Elizabeth Brunner, in Great Masters series was released[17][18] He died on 9th January, 2003, in Nizamuddin East, New Delhi, after a brief illness at the age of 102, he was survived by his wife Snehlata and daughter Amba Sanyal, costume designer, while her husband KT Ravindran, is a noted architect and dean of Delhi's School of Planning and Architecture.