Gulammohammed Sheikh’s oeuvre grows from a deep immersion into cultural narratives with his mastery of painterly and sculptural forms. His work is rooted in a profound exploration of cultural histories, mythologies and artistic traditions transcending conventional confines and charting a distinctive trajectory that interweaves heritage and contemporary expression. Being an accomplished artist, poet and scholar have jointly shaped his work, with the four paintings he contributed to the exhibition Place for People (1981) marking a first confluence. In these works, he drew on elements from his memory, immediate surroundings and world art at-large to create images that “open up passages between the personal and the social, the present and the past, the near and the distant. With it, his paintings became, like the world he lived in, a palimpsest of many temporalities and cultures that speak to us in multiple tongues” – writes art historian and curator professor R. Siva Kumar in the exhibition essay.
