Prokash Karmakar was the son of the renowned artist Prahlad Karmakar. Orphaned at an early age, Prokash saw the most turbulent times in the history of India like the famine and partition. But unlike his contemporaries he never directly painted those images directly; rather he metamorphosed those horrors into objects of fantasy, thus escaping from the real to the surreal.

One of the most successful artists from Bengal, he was greatly influenced by Picasso and the impressionists. Lush landscapes and female nudes in particular were subjects that greatly interested him; the nudes in his works were the celebration of the flesh and the fantasy of the male drives.

A revolutionary, he always preferred to exhibit in the street corners rather than within the four walls of a gallery.