[4] Narayan Shridhar Bendre was born in a Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin family on 21 August 1910 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Part of 1945 was spent as artist-in-residence at Santiniketan, where he met Nandalal Bose, Ramkinkar Baij and Binode Behari Mukherjee.

Bendre's early work has been classified as being academic and impressionist, dominant subjects being the landscape and the portrait, in oils and gouache.

Bendre was back in Bombay in 1947, from where he left in June for the United States, holding a solo exhibition at the Windermere Gallery, New York, in 1948.

An independent nation and an art scene animated by the adventure of the Progressive Artists Group greeted his return in March 1948.

It was here that he embarked upon a phase held as his most important, which involved experiments with Cubist, Expressionist and abstract tendencies, producing such works as Thorn (1955, National Award)', Sunflowers, The Parrot and the Chameleon, which give evidence of his shifting allegiances to currents in mainstream European modernism, and his attempts to combine these with Indian formal and thematic considerations.

His career was recognised further with a retrospective exhibition at the Lalit kala Academy in 1974, the Aban-Gagan Award from Vishwa Bharati University in 1984, and the Kalidas Samman in 1984.

Hairdo (1949), "The Sunflower" (1955), "Monkey" (1957), "The Cow and the Calf" (1948), "The Female Cowherd" (1956), "Homebound", "The Bullock Cart" and "Gossip" Students of his included Balkrishna Patel, Ghulam Rasool Santosh, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Haku Shah, Jayant Parikh, Jyoti Bhatt, Kamudben Patel, Naina Dalal, Shri Ranjitsinh Pratapsinh Gaekwad, Ratan Parimoo, Shanti Dave, Triloke Kaul.