Ram Gopal Vijay Vargiya was a genius and innovative artist from Rajasthan who became a patagonist of the Bengal school. He was born in 1905 at Baler Sawai Madhopur district in Rajasthan state in India. He learnt painting at the Maharaja School of Arts in Jaipur where the artist Asit Kumar Haldar was Principal. Later he went to Kolkata where he absorbed further influences from the Bengal School, especially the artist Shailendra Nath De whom he considered his guru. He was Principal of Rajasthan Kala Mandir and Rajasthan School of Art from 1945 to 1966.

Ramgopal Vijaivargiya found his inspiration from the Bengal School of painting though he remained wholly unattached to any particular school of Indian art. In the foreword to The Art of Vijaivargiya, Ram Chandra Tandan wrote: “The Art of Vijaivargiya is noteworthy not only because of its actual achievement, which is considerable, but also because of its great promise: for the artist is still young and full of confidence in himself.” (R C Tandan, The Art of Vijaivargiya, At the time, Ramgopal Vijaivargiya was 30, and had sold nearly 1000 paintings in the small space of the Indian art world of the 1930s. R C Tandan noticed his talent and printed an album of a few select works for the Hindustani Academy in Allahabad, which were later displayed at exhibitions in Calcutta and Bombay. Vijaivargiya later headed the Rajasthan Kala Mandir and Rajasthan School of Art from 1945 to 1966, and went on to win several state and national awards.

Vijaivargiya had a “strong individualistic sense” as a student of Hindu mythology, and his themes “…have a wide range, grading from the spiritual at one end to the almost erotic at the other, all characterized in their execution by a certain suppleness and grace of lines.”