The National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai is delighted to present 'WALKING THROUGH SOUL CITY, Sudhir Patwardhan: A Retrospective', supported by Guild Art and curated by Ms. Nancy Adajania. The exhibition is on view from 30th November, 2019 to 12th February, 2020 and will include a range of public engagement  programs  such as panel discussions,  guided tours, publications and social outreach with underprivileged children.  

Over two hundred significant artworks, spanning over five decades have been included in this retrospective. A number of these works have been loaned, both from public and private museums, including private collections making it possible for the curator to access rare iconic works for this retrospective. Three of the artworks are from NGMA’s collection. 

Excerpt from Curator’s Note 

“Patwardhan was socialised in Marxist thought in the early 1970s while studying medicine in Pune. He chose to become a radiologist and set up practice in Thane while continuing to paint and exhibit regularly.  Inevitably, then, he brings his scientific training to bear on his artistic practice, experience his scalpel-like observation of physical abnormalities. But equally, he brings to his works an intense hope for a unified field, an affinity for Platonic solids and impossible objects that are all the more real for being optical illusions. I would argue that Patwardhan’s art is propelled by the constant interplay between a palpable materialism and a philosophical idealism. 

One of the recurrent tropes in Patwardhan’s work is that of walking. Walking as an existentialist declaration   or  a   traversal   of   treacherous   ground,  as an  expression of  solidarity  with dissenters. Above all, walking as a construction of reality through the revisiting of memories, observations and desires. I would contend that this love of walking has made him approach the landscape, not as a genre construct, but as an enactment through meandering. […]This exhibition, which includes many rarely seen early works, testifies to all the major shifts in Patwardhan’s  oeuvre,  from  the  Bombay  riots  in  1992,  to  the  onslaught  of  the  forces  of globalisation  and the fragmentation  of class  solidarity,  to his growing  awareness  of his own vulnerable, ageing body and spectre-possessed mind. Hope, we know, is not verifiable. Yet it is transformative hope that Sudhir Patwardhan holds close to his heart, even while history asserts its inexorable claim”. – Nancy Adajania 

Patwardhan was born in Pune, Maharashtra in 1949 and graduated in Medicine from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune in 1972. He moved to Mumbai in 1973 and worked as  a Radiologist in Thane until 2005. He took to full-time painting from 1975 onwards and held his first solo exhibition in 1979. In 1982, he was one of the six artists in the exhibition Place for People, a landmark show in Indian Art history which initiated a new concern with social issues in art. 

Some of Patwardhan’s select museum and institutional shows include, Humsafar, at Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal presented by The Guild, 2018; The Journey is the Destination,  Jehangir  Nicholson  Art  Foundation,  CSMVS,  Mumbai,  2016;  Kochi  Muziris Biennale, Kochi, 2014; Midnight to the Boom, Painting in India after Independence, curated by Susan Bean, Peabody Essex Museum of Art, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 2013; The Sahmat Collective, Art and Activism in India since 1989, curated by Jessica Moss and Ram Rahman, The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2013; Social Fabric, curated by Grant Watson. INIVA, London; Lunds Konsthall, Lund, Sweden; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai; Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, Zhejiang Museum, China, 2012; Cinema City, curated by Madhushree Dutta and Archana Hande; NGMA, Mumbai and New Delhi by Majlis, 2012; Modernist Art from India, curated by Beth Citron, Rubin Museum, New York, 2011; Modern Indian Art – Ethos of Modernity, Sichuan Museum, Shenzhen Museum, Zhejiang Museum, China, 2010; Re Visions, Indian Artist Emerging Traditions, Susan Bean, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, U.S.A., 2009. 

His recent solo shows include, Spectres, Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2017; Line by Line, Gallerie 88, Kolkata in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2016; Route Maps, The Guild, Mumbai, 2012; Family Fiction, Sakshi Gallery Mumbai and Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, 2011; The Crafting of Reality, The Guild, Mumbai, 2008.

About Nancy Adajania 

Nancy Adajania is a cultural theorist and curator based in Bombay. Adajania was Joint Artistic Director of the 9th Gwangju Biennale in 2012, and has curated many exhibitions including: ‘ ‘The  Earth’s  Heart  Torn  Out’,  Navjot Altaf: A Life  in Art’(National  Gallery  of Modern  Art, Mumbai,  2018/2019)  and ‘No Parsi is an Island: A Curatorial  Re-reading  Across 150 Years’ (National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, 2016). Her forthcoming curatorial projects include: ‘Counter-Canon, Counter-Culture: Alternative Histories of Indian Art’, Serendipity Arts Festival, Goa, 2019 and the Bawwaba section of Art Dubai 2020. 

Adajania taught the curatorial practice course at the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts (2013/2014).  She was the juror for Video/Film/New Media fellowship cycle of the AkademieSchloss Solitude (2015-2017). Adajania has proposed several new theoretical models through her extensive writings on media art, public art, transcultural art and the biennale culture from the Global South.  She  has  lectured  on  these  subjects  at  numerous  venues  including Documenta 11, Kassel; ZKM, Karlsruhe; the Centre for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York and the 3rd Former West Research Congress, Vienna. She has recently edited two transdisciplinary anthologies ‘Some things that only art can do: A Lexicon of Affective Knowledge’ and ‘Totems and Taboos: What can and cannot be done’ for the Raza Foundation (2017/2018). 

About the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai 

The National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai was opened to the public on December 23rd, 1996. It is located in the precincts of the former auditorium the Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall (C.J.P. Hall) and the Institute of Science. This architecturally marvellous building was designed and built by the famous British architect George Wittet in 1911. C. J. Hall was donated to the city of Mumbai in 1911 by Sir Cowasji Jehangir, whose family has gifted the city, no less than four magnificent public buildings. 

Only the facade remains of the edifice that was built by George Wittet. This building has been completely redesigned by the famous architect Romi Khosla giving it a spiral spin.  The interior with  its  elegant  horse  - shoe  shaped  balconies  now  exhibits  a different  look  with  a  central stairway and semicircular galleries at different levels.  

NGMA, Mumbai is home to an incredible collection of one thousand four hundred and fifty-six art works which include paintings, sculptures, graphics and photographs. While the permanent collection includes both Indian and international artists, special focus has been on the Bombay Progressive Artists which includes the artists S.H. Raza, V. S. Gaitonde, Akbar Padamsee, Ram Kumar, F. N. Souza and more. However,  true to its ethos as an institution  that is resolutely focused on India’s contemporary  art landscape,  it also houses the works of artists like Nalini Malani,  Anupam  Sud,  Vasudeo Kamath,  Arpana  Caur  and sculptures  by  Himmat  Shah,  J.K. Chillar and Dilip Mishra.