“Cities: Built, Broken” is Indian artist Sudhir Patwardhan’s London solo debut, presented by the New Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery at the Frieze-backed project space No. 9 Cork Street through October 19. Born in 1949 in Pune, Maharashtra, the self-taught artist took up painting in the 1970s, when he moved to Thane, near Mumbai, to study medicine. He worked as a radiologist for three decades until 2005, when he decided to become a full-time artist.
Patwardhan captures the human lives, social fabric, and urban landscape of the city on his canvases, in a style resonating with that of Cézanne and Picasso. This exhibition at Cork Street highlights a recent body of work, which continues to demonstrate Patwardhan’s insightful and emotive depiction of his homeland’s transformation. Concurrently, his works are also on view at the Barbican Centre’s “The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 197-1998,” a critically acclaimed landmark group show of more than 30 Indian artists whose works reflect the dramatic sociopolitical changes the country went through during these decades.
- Vivienne Chow
8 October 2024
