"I have only painted what I have seen," Satish Gujral (1925-2020) once claimed. Indeed, he had seen plenty in his eventful life and there's a lot for us — the viewers — to see in his recently-opened centennial retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi. Held in collaboration with the NGMA, Ministry of Culture and the Gujral Foundation and curated by Kishore Singh, 'Satish Gujral 100: A Centenary Exhibition’ celebrates the artist's multifaceted legacy through a sprawling display of over 165 paintings, reliefs, sculptures and drawings along with rarely-seen archival material (including a recreation of his studio where collected objects, his writings, photographs, unfinished paintings, paint brushes, palettes and even his cleaning rags have been given a pride of place).
Regarded among India's most distinguished modern artists, Gujral's enduring career spanning seven decades saw him travel extensively and work across different continents and mediums, amassing a staggering body of work that continues to shape the Indian modern visual identity. "Gujral saab's responses as an artist to the environment around him came from a place of deep contemplation, thereby building a legacy that has and will continue to stand the test of time," notes curator Kishore Singh.
Born in 1925 in Jhelum (present-day Pakistan), Gujral's art was underpinned by the turbulence of two major personal tragedies, a spirit that haunts this exhibition in strange and moving ways. Gujral lost his hearing at the age of eight due to a swimming accident (a similar water mishap subsequently caused the death of his beloved brother Raj). But instead of letting the disability affect him and the all-pervasive silence plunge him into an abyss of darkness, he turned the impairment into what he himself perfectly described as a "bliss of solitude." Another blow, this time both personal and political/historical, was the Partition of India in 1947, which displaced millions of refugee families. "He accompanied armed convoys of refugees from Pakistan to India over a period of eight months, witnessing acts of arson, murder, pillaging, loot, rape and violence on an unimaginable scale," says Singh. From Lahore, the Gujrals first migrated to Simla and eventually settled down in Delhi.
When Singh began work on 'Satish Gujral 100', he was clear that he wanted to locate Gujral as a versatile master and serial experimenter who dabbled in painting, sculpture, ceramics, murals and even architecture and whose legacy became closely intertwined with that of the newly born nation’s journey. "His art was a considered and personal reaction to what he saw around him, almost like a newspaper’s editorial rather than the reportage on its first page," Singh says, describing him as a chronicler or a storyteller who looked within, deeper into his inner self, to create art that was "thoughtful, empathetic and humanitarian but also indicative of his position on a range of socio-political issues."
The Gujral that emerges from this retrospective is an irrepressible and yet, quiet force of nature for whom art and life were inseparable from each other. Particularly powerful are a series of 12 Partition masterpieces such as Despair, Dissolution, Sermon on the Mount, The Conqueror, The Shrine and Wail, which revisit the horrors of 1947 through the eyes of a young boy who saw the mob violence, communal riots and forced migration at close quarters and never forgot the "unhealed wounds" (his own words) of the victims of the devastating tragedy that divided the Indian subcontinent. These works carry emotions of grief and trauma and memories of personal loss and collective pain. Over the decades, they have become emblematic of Gujral's career-defining oeuvre but as Singh quickly reminds us, these paintings are equally of historical importance and universal in nature as they bear witness to human suffering. That's why they remain resonant even today, asserts Singh whose favourite Partition painting in the show happens to be an unusually tiny one called Mourning en Masse. "It is a jewel, even though its subject is lamentation and loss," he says. Then there are works from Gujral's later career, often recalled as childhood memories, which introduce the simplicity and childlike wonder from a little boy’s perspective that "warm the cockles of one’s heart," as Singh puts it. Feroze Gujral, daughter-in-law of the late artist and co-founder and director of the non-profit Gujral Foundation, counts an evocative Partition-era self-portrait by Gujral as one of her personal favourites in this show. "This painting epitomises all the angst and pain that he went through, and it's got these deep depressive colours. And yet, it's brimming with hope and optimism that he came out on the other side to tell his story," she explains.
Gujral trained in art at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore followed by Sir J.J. School of Art in Bombay, where his contemporaries included artists like F. N. Souza, Akbar Padamsee, V.S. Gaitonde, M.F. Husain and Tyeb Mehta. Reportedly, it was his Partition works that earned him a scholarship to Mexico — a first for an Indian artist. Coming under the tutelage of Mexican legends like David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera deepened his innate sympathy towards social realism. He began abstraction around the same time as V.S. Gaitonde, Group 1890’s J. Swaminathan and others, and this helped him evolve his own language of muralism when he first started experimenting with public art. "No other artist has contributed as many murals as Gujral saab to buildings in New Delhi and other cities. But he also brought an element of playfulness into his oeuvre that most people are unaware of with his pop paintings and murals, as well as eroticised love paintings representing desire," says Singh, adding that he was a warm-hearted and socially conscious man who also expressed his outrage against the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975-77 and the Delhi riots that followed her assassination in 1984.
Gujral died aged 96 in 2020. He would have been 100 last year, like his close friend Krishen Khanna whose centenary celebrations brought the entire Indian art world together in 2025. Nevertheless, 'Satish Gujral 100’ stands as a compelling tribute. Like other recent centennial tomes honouring the life and legacies of masters like Krishen Khanna, K.G. Subramanyan, F.N. Souza and Somnath Hore, this one too turns back the pages of history to the origins of the modernist movement in India, showing us how the pivotal moments in the life of a nation can influence the vision of an artist—and vice versa.
‘Satish Gujral 100: A Centenary Exhibition’ is on view at National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi until March 30.
All images: Courtesy of The Gujral Foundation
