In 1920, he joined the
Serampore College of Art, where he spent the following six years practising and teaching painting and sculpture. During this period he has neither subscribed to the
Bengal school nor sided with the Victorian academism, but evolved his own individualistic style, which got him noticed The turning point in his career however came in 1929, when he was commissioned by Punjabi firm, Krishna Plaster Works to go to Lahore to make a bust of recently martyred leader,
Lala Lajpat Rai, ahead of Lahore Session of
Indian National Congress. He stayed back as other commissions followed, and soon became vice-principal of the
Mayo School of Arts, Lahore (now known as
National College of Arts), which was earlier started by
Lockwood Kipling (father of author
Rudyard Kipling). Here two of his students
Satish Gujral and Krishen Khanna went on to become prominent modernists of the post-independence period. He remained at Mayo till 1936, when he was forced to resign as the
British Raj viewed him as a "trouble-maker". Subsequently, he set up the Lahore College of Art in 1937, a studio-cum-school, initially at the premises of the
Forman Christian College, at the invitation of its first Indian principal, Dr. S.K. Dutta. The school was later formally inaugurated in a basement at the
Dayal Singh Mansions, with an exhibition of prominent artists from Lahore, of the period. He continued to freelanced and taught here, till 1947. After the
partition of India, Sanyal and his wife Snelata, a ghazal singer and theatre person, moved to Delhi, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Here he set up base in the 26,
Gole Market. This "refugee studio" soon became a hub for artists and students in Delhi, and later gallery 26. Soon it gave rise to the
Delhi Shilpi Chakra (Delhi Sculptor Circle), which he founded along with a number of artist-friends (Dinkar Kowshik, K.S Kulkarni, Jaya Appasamy,
Shankar Pillai, Kanwal Krishna, P.N Mago, etc.) had an important influence on the contemporary art in the
North India. He showed at the
Salon de Mai, Paris in 1949, and also participated in the
Venice Biennale (1953); in the same year he joined as Professor and Head of the Department of Art, Delhi Polytechnic,
Kashmiri Gate, (1953–1960), now upgraded to the College of Art. A number of his works are now part of the collection of
National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. His sculpture,
The Veiled Figure, broke new grounds in sculpture as he portrayed the memory of his mother. He set up a cottage at
Andretta, at foothills of
Dhauladhar range in
Himachal Pradesh, where he came close to
Norah Richards. Till late in his age he remained engaged in setting up the Andretta artists' resort and Nora Centre for the Arts at Andretta, near
Palampur in
Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh., and to collect funds for his project, he continued to exhibit and sell his works. He remained active till the end, and at 101 ventured into lithograph with considerable success at Atlier print shop in Delhi. The Government of India, issued a special postage stamp to commemorate his birth centenary in 2000, while
IGNCA, New Delhi in part of its celebrations, of his 100th birthday held a function on 22 April 2001, where an exhibition of tributes by over 170 artistes in various media was opened and a DVD on him along with
Elizabeth Brunner, in Great Masters series was released He died on 9 January 2003, in
Nizamuddin East, New Delhi, after a brief illness at the age of 102, he was survived by his wife Snehlata and daughter
Amba Sanyal, costume designer, while her husband KT Ravindran, is a noted architect and dean of Delhi's
School of Planning and Architecture. ==Awards and recognition==