Uninfluenced by the European modern art trends till the 1940s, Sen experimented with a vocabulary drawn from Indian idioms. Exposure to the works of Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gaugin, and other masters, through their reproductions during his teaching years at Art College, Indore, sparked off Sen’s interest in form. In 1942, he participated in the only exhibition of the Calcutta Group, of which he was a founder member.