Sudhir Patwardhan: An Artist Every Day

UNDER THE PRETEXT of two upcoming shows, I made every attempt to invite myself over to veteran artist Sudhir Patwardhan’s studio in Mumbai. He’d be happy to have me, but there was a minor technicality. Around 2008, he’d relocated his studio into his home in Thane. It was early October, and the first viewing of his latest show, Spectres , at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, was barely a day or two away. His studio would be next to empty. Added to this was the fact that for the eight-day duration of the show, he and his wife, Shanta, would be living in South Mumbai. I had to be content with the privilege of viewing the show at Jehangir, on the last day, alongside a swarm of Mumbaikars. I even managed a quick snapshot of the couple framed against his spectacular new cityscape, Another Day in the Old City, a meticulously framed ode to Pune, where he spent many years studying medicine and understanding in a more scholarly way, the anatomical underpinnings of the human figure, training himself to be an artist by sketching people he met on the streets, liberating himself from the trappings of an art-school education.

8 November 2017