While conferring the prestigious Pritzker Prize to BV Doshi (1927-2023) in 2018, a 10-member jury lauded him for practising “the art of architecture” throughout his long career of 60 years. Their praise beautifully summed up the double helix of his identity: an artist-architect who built new worlds with space, light and a generous imagination as raw materials.
Blueprints of Illusions, on display at Vadehra Art Gallery, in New Delhi, offers a glimpse into the unique sensibility Doshi brought to his life and work. Featuring a selection of his paintings and drawings, the show is complemented by a beautifully produced book, The Art of Balkrishna Doshi (2023), which includes writings by, and on, Doshi, alongside images from his extensive oeuvre.
Walking through the tightly curated but cosy space, one is struck, above all, by the sheer eclectic, inventive energy of Doshi’s gaze. His hand is possessed by an idiosyncratic flair for shapes and lines, always in a constant flux, while his focus is trained on problems and paradoxes, playfully but never unseriously.
