completed his Diploma with distinction. Career in art As S. M. Pandit father's financial condition was very poor, his aunt sold her gold bangles which fetched her Rs 50 and gave money to Pandit to move Bombay for his further studies and career. This was a great turning point for him, Pandit soon made his mark in the commercial world of advertising, as also calendar and film art. He began his commercial career in 1938–39, by painting MGM showcards for Bombay's Metro Theater. He and a few other artists set up the Young Artists Commercial Arts Studio in Bombay, designing the publicity for Franz Osten's 1938 Bombay talkies film Bhabhi. They also became the first Indians to create painted show-cards featuring Hollywood greats, Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, and Joan Crawford for the MGM. During this period, Pandit also innovated the use of quicker drying Gouache on cloth over oil paints in creating his film posters. Pandit left the Studio to join Ratan Batra's advertising agency, which had as its clientele many of the new indigenous industrial houses like Mafatlal, Kohinoor, Khatau, etc. Pandit also met Baburao Patel, the editor of Filmindia magazine around this time and began designing and illustrating the cover pages for Filmindia which continue to be popular even to this day. By 1944, Pandit set up his own studio called Studio S. M. Pandit in Bombay's Shivaji Park where he produced film publicity for Prabhat Studios, Raj Kapoor, Sohrab Modi, among many others. In the studio Pandit collaborated with another young artist from Goa, Raghuvir Mulgaonkar (1922–76) who continued to gratefully acknowledge the immense influence that Pandit had in developing his oeuvre. During this time, Pandit designed the posters and other publicity material for such films as Dr. Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani, 1946; Barsaat, 1949, etc. Pandit continued to work for Filmindia in his characteristic style typified by poster paintings with glamorous appeal, dramatic expression and bold graphic composition which influenced his other body of works including the religious and mythological paintings which continue to be his lasting legacy. Pandit had started painting mythological subjects in the 1950s on orders from the Bombay Fine Arts Press and Nagpur's Shivraj Fine Arts Press. While the influence of Raja Ravi Varma and M. V. Dhurandhar are more than evident in these paintings, it is also true that the 'Filmi' influence in the characterisation of 'made-up' protagonists with highlights shimmering