When Paresh Maity's solo show opens simultaneously at CIMA and the Birla Academy of Art and Culture on Saturday, it will, probably, be the 74th of the 50-year-old artist.

He passed out of the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, in 1989-90, but by then he had already had his first one-man display. In 1986, at the Academy of Fine Arts. Which gives him some three decades as a practising artist. And that works out to two shows a year with about 14 to spare: an incredible tally.

Well, if such prolificacy makes you feel wary, fret not over plenitude. It's quite obvious that the savvy artist doesn't care to starve the market. Not only does the high output say that he sells - and how! - it is also an important window into his creative drive.

The present retrospective, open till January 16, presents a wide range of media: 32 oils, including 10 small abstractions; 13 watercolours, including two from his school days; three mixed media works; 15 ink drawings; and seven sculptures and installations, three of which will be on view on the lawn at Birla Academy. A total of 70 works.

If artists are broadly classified into two groups, with the contemplative Cezanne being the supreme example of one and the feisty, irrepressible Picasso of the other, then it's easy to figure which group to bracket Maity with.

As he says, "I work all the time, even when I travel; even now, as I talk to you, that oddly-shaped mirror is suggesting ideas to me..." Because his work is his play and his passion. Because, quite simply, he couldn't do otherwise....

Consider this. Maity was, as a boy, fascinated by the making of the Durga effigy by patuas, which is not unusual at all. Many artists growing up in villages - notably Jamini Roy, Jogen Chowdhury and Lalu Prasad Shaw - were as taken up with the formidable legacy of the patua community. But which boy of about 10-11 would haul a heavy straw-and-clay divine effigy back from the river after immersion got over to research the artifice behind the art?

This clearly tells you that he was as obsessive about making clay idols - about art, that is- as he was about being scientific in his approach, unconsciously imitating the way Renaissance artists would study the human anatomy with bodies collected from the morgue.

Maity Senior, father Sachidananda, wasn't quite amused when, instead of sitting for the Joint Entrance as all ideal sons were meant to - if they got the qualifying marks in their Boards, that is, which Paresh did - the boy was bent on doing art. Of all things...! In fact, so unbearable did the pressure at home become that the rebellious, headstrong adolescent actually ran away to Delhi with the prize money he had got from art competitions, and only returned two months later. A desperate step that tells you how consuming his hunger was for art; how decided he was on his calling; how focused on his future.

And that future has been a story of splendid success. A success that has not a little to do with the eminent accessibility of his art to all. For example, the muted, liquefied, luminous, dissolving blurs in his watercolours - particularly the subtle variation in depths in the darker shades - would, no doubt, appeal even to those who wouldn't know that this is a very tricky medium, giving away any awkward touch of the artist unlike oil which can coat flaws over. Or that watercolours of the size Maity exhibits - the biggest in this show is a massive 108" x 54" - haven't, possibly, been attempted by anybody else anywhere.

It's also most likely that art-lovers will be stirred by the brilliant palette of the oils - the cobalt blue, the radiant reds, the flaming yellows - even if they miss the playful visual quotes from Picasso. As for the sculptures and installations, they clearly incorporate elements to awe and overwhelm the viewer. Particularly the two works with thousands of bells. And that's not because of size alone.

But doesn't success also mean copies? Sitting on a sofa, legs drawn up as though he were doing his morning yoga, clad in a black silk kurta he himself has designed, a beret perched askance on his balding head, Maity is confident that it isn't easy to fake his works. For one thing, his documentation is pretty exhaustive. For another, the specialised material he works with - the paper he orders from abroad, for example, with its watermark - couldn't be copied.

Organised and disciplined, with three studios in and around Delhi and a large staff at work, Maity is a fine example of success: self-made but without selling his soul. His father would have been proud.

Sounds of Silence will be open from December 12 toJanuary 16 at CIMA Gallery, and December 12 to January 7 at Birla Academy of Art and Culture (Garden)