George Keyt was born in erstwhile Ceylon now renamed as Sri Lanka on 17th April 1901 and passed away in 1993. He was educated at Trinity College (Kandy), an elite colonial school in the British public school tradition. Stemming from Indo-Dutch origins, Keyt gave much time from an early age to drawing and the study of art and developed a consuming passion for books and reading.
The spell of the ancient hill capital and its Buddhist aura soon came to exercise a powerful and lasting influence and was to provide both the literary and artistic stimulus living so close to the Malwatte Vihare. He became greatly drawn towards Buddhism and championed the cause of the Buddhist revival. He wrote profusely in both prose and verse.
The young painter also began to turn his back on the values of the westernised milieu of the class into which he was born. His explorations in Hindu mythology and Indian literature led him to close links with the cultural life of India, where he lived for long and short periods from 1939 right up to the late seventies. To the Sri Lankan Buddhist source were now added the compelling imagery of Hindu myth and legend as vital influences. A meeting with Rabindranath Tagore in the 1930s in Ceylon left a lasting impression this was also the same period that saw him preoccupied with the depiction of episodes from the Buddhist Jataka or Birth stories, culminating in the representation of the life and times of the Buddha on the walls of the circumambulatory shrine room of Gautami Vihara in Borella in 1940. In 1954 his work was exhibited at the ICA (London) by Sir Herbert Read and afterwards the exhibition travelled to the Art Institute of Rotterdam.
His fame as a painter has obscured his significance as a poet; not so well known, therefore, is the fact that he was one of the few poets of any stature in contemporary Sri Lanka.
Many exhibitions of his work have also been held in India, London and other European and American centres. His work is to be found in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, The British Museum, as well as various public collections in India and Sri Lanka and throughout the world.
