Prof. Dr Avinash Kolhe revisits Satish K Gujral’s centenary retrospective at Mumbai’s NGMA, exploring how Partition, political upheaval, and public life shaped an uncompromising modernist whose paintings, sculptures, and architecture transformed grief into collective memory.

Satish Gujral (1925–2020) was one of India’s most distinguished modernist artists, working across painting, sculpture, muralism and architecture. Shaped by childhood hearing loss and the trauma of Partition, he developed an extraordinary multidisciplinary practice that brought personal memory into conversation with history, politics and public life. His landmark architectural work includes the Belgian Embassy in New Delhi, while his contributions to Indian art earned him the Padma Vibhushan in 1999.

Partition: India's Historical Wound

What is Holocaust to European artists and painters is Partition to Indian artists and painters. No wonder one finds this reality depicted on the canvas by Satish K Gujral [1925–2020], whose centenary retrospective was inaugurated on Friday at the NGMA, Mumbai.

Satish Gujral: The Modernist Returns’ will run for the next six weeks and is presented by JSW and Gujral Foundation. The Retrospective has over 100 artworks across disciplines, including archives and architectural drawings.

The Retrospective has been arranged in a thoughtful way, where a viewer climbs through the horrors of Partition, of which Gujral was one of the million victims. The range of works that one experiences in the exhibition is breathtaking for the sheer variety of subjects as well as the mediums used for expression: metal, wood and architectural drawings. One can also sense a hatred for market forces which a mediocre artist succumbs to so often and so easily. This highlights Gujral’s thinking towards art: ‘I don’t want to be popular. I want to be different’.

A Lifetime Shaped by Upheaval

Gujral lived long. He was 95 when he passed. It meant he was a witness to Partition and its horrors, followed by the making of the modern republic of India, the Internal Emergency of 1975–77, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the arrival of the 21st century.

His restless mind expressed all these in his art in various forms and materials. This should be understood at the micro as well as macro level. Born in Jhelum in 1925, he lost his hearing in an accident in childhood. Soon he faced Partition, which actually meant a loss of lives, property and relationships. This grief stayed with him till the last. In 1986, when he visited Lahore, he suffered a heart attack as he just could not believe that he was back in Lahore!

From Lahore to Mexican Muralism

He learned art and the science of art at Mayo School of Art, Lahore, and then moved to J J School of Art, Mumbai. His poor health did not allow him to complete the art school course, and he was forced to leave Bombay. In 1952, good news arrived which took him to Mexico to apprentice under Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, founders of the Mexican Muralism movement. Here he imbibed the connection between art and ordinary people. The Belgium Embassy in New Delhi is testimony to this commitment. This unique building was selected by the international forum of architects as one of the finest buildings built in the 20th century.

Art, Architecture and a World Constitution

In addition to his work now available at the NGMA exhibition, one should also watch a documentary on his life, ‘Satish Gujral’, made by none other than Balwant Gargi and produced by the Film Division of India. As mentioned above, he was an artist who was quite aware of the happenings around him. He too realized that to make this world a better and peaceful place to live, we should have the World Constitution. With his brother Inder Kumar Gujral, former Prime Minister of India, he took the initiative to draft one such constitution, which became a reality in 1991 when the Constitution for the Federation of Earth was adopted.

Satish Gujral was never an ivory tower artist.