Mahagama Sekera was born in 1929. He entered the Government school in Radawana in 1934, before attending the Government College of Fine Arts in 1948. In 1950 he entered the Teacher Training School in Nittabuwa and left it in 1952 as a Sinhalese trained teacher. If he is best known as a poet of the modern Sinhala literary tradition, he was also a renowned painter, lyricist (of songs still famous nowadays), playwright and filmmaker of one sole movie, Three Way Junction. Mahagama Sekara died from sudden cardiac arrest in 1976 at age 46.
