Important Notice

An entirely-self taught artist, Sudhir Patwardhan began to paint in the mid 1970s when he moved to Bombay to establish a full-time radiology practice. Based in the industrialized suburb of Thane, the artist embraced local subjects in his painting, and subsequently, a large section of his oeuvre relates to urban life in India and the country’s dynamic cityscapes. One of Patwardhan’s main concerns, in this context, is the effect of human... An entirely-self taught artist, Sudhir Patwardhan began to paint in the mid 1970s when he moved to Bombay to establish a full-time radiology practice. Based in the industrialized suburb of Thane, the artist embraced local subjects in his painting, and subsequently, a large section of his oeuvre relates to urban life in India and the country’s dynamic cityscapes. One of Patwardhan’s main concerns, in this context, is the effect of human development and industry on the landscape.

Part of the same series, these small format landscapes from the late 1980s were created on site in Pokhran as part of Patwardhan’s drive to capture ‘the real and the normal’ in his work, almost ascetically removing all traces of the self. Fellow artist Gieve Patel describes these works as “descriptive to the point of literalness”, further explaining that Patwardhan’s aim in this series was, “…to paint it all, tree by tree so to speak; the most important thing being the painting of it in the present, here and now, right before the subject, a pursuit that is almost totally eliminated today in the practice of artists all over the world” (“Two Visions” in Gieve Patel, Sudhir Patwardhan, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2006, p. 56).

In lot 4, a canvas from 1987, the artist portrays Pokhran as a development-ravaged area where entire faces of hills have been blasted away to level the land in the name of urban sprawl. Directly lifting his subdued palette of browns and greens from the scene in front of him, Patwardhan depicts Pokhran as an arid and lifeless place – the result of human folly. Lot 5, however, throws a very different light on Pokhran. Painted in 1989, this canvas reflects a pristine slice of the area, unclaimed by its neighbouring metropolis. Here, vibrant greens dominate the frame, and a healthy stream winds through its small valley. Although evidence of human activity is present in the paths leading up the hillside, it is muted and in consonance with the scene.

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