Galerie 88 and The Guild art gallery are thrilled to present Line by Line, an exhibition of drawings by Sudhir Patwardhan at Galerie 88, in Kolkata. The exhibition brings together sketches, preparatory drawings and independent drawings. Patwardhan’s active engagement and participation in the cultural activities taking place in the Mumbai Metropolis gives him an acute insight into the cultural, social and political life of the metropolis. Patwardhan’s deep observations of the unstructured growth of the metropolis over the decades, concurrent with the shifting social and familial mores and relationships provide the bases of the artist's intimate and charged drawing process.

Patwardhan says “I believe drawing is primary to my artistic practice, as indeed it is for many artists. It has three different roles to play - as sketch, as preparatory drawing and as finished, independent drawing.  In the sketch book ideas get their first formulation. More structured preparatory drawings become the foundation of paintings, and others are just independent, stand-alone drawings.”  

“The independent drawings have been done in the past six to seven years. They speak of many different experiences. The image of the human body has been a constant preoccupation with me. The single human figure under different conditions of stress - social, domestic and existential, is a recurring subject. Other, related subjects include the urban and suburban environment, home, illness, and the relationships between people. I do believe that because of the directness and bareness of the drawing activity, things can get said in drawing that may escape the more layered and complex processes of painting.”