A sculpture reflects the sculptor’s way of seeing the world. In late Nagji Patel’s case, each piece becomes a dialogue between material and maker, reciting tales of who he was. Now, a retrospective ‘Still, They Speak’, curated by Akar Prakar, is on view at Stainless Gallery—eight years after his passing and nearly 15 since the last such show in Delhi.
Born into a family of farmers in Gujarat’s Juni Jithardi village in 1937, Patel became one of India’s most respected sculptors in the 1960s, known for reducing detailed imagery into its simplest, most essential forms. Take his 1964 sculpture ‘Bird’, a smaller version of which is on display. “The piece doesn’t depict a bird, but evokes bird-ness—a distilled, abstract essence of the form,” says Siddhi Shailendra, curator at Akar Prakar, quoting KNMA’s director and chief curator Roobina Karode from the book The Enshrined Object: Nagji Patel – Sculptures and Drawings. The work reflects the minimalist aesthetic inspired by Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, and shaped by his mentor Sankho Chaudhuri at M.S. University, Baroda.
Patel is known for his large-scale sculptures that helped redefine public art. Many of them are now on display across the world from Japan to Bulgaria. The show features smaller versions (from 1999 and 2007) of ‘Abacus’ (2004), crafted from pink, black, yellow, and white marble from different parts of Rajasthan. “He procured these by visiting quarries across the country himself,” notes Shailendra.
On view are process drawings of his ‘Snake’ sculpture, now in Japan—studies of the snake in motion and repose that show how Patel used drawing to understand form before translating it into sculpture. “In these drawings, you see his process step by step,” says Shailendra. “He experiments with the form’s fluidity. One curve tightly coiled, another more relaxed, capturing the snake's movement before it becomes stone.”
Sculptor of memory
Patel’s art often drew from memory—of childhood and farm life. He began sculpting early, making clay toys at home and modeling geometric forms in art class. These experiences shaped his ‘Toy’ series, where he recreated objects from his youth: spinning tops, or a half-opened pomegranate with its seeds individually carved—on display at the retrospective.
Shailendra calls this series a way for Patel to revisit childhood and evoke shared nostalgia. “There’s a certain ease and playfulness in his creations. For instance, the spinning tops—you can’t play with them. But just looking at them evokes a feeling from the past.”
Patel also paid tribute to the land through his ‘Implements’ series featuring life-sized sculptures of tools like ploughs, crafted in marble, sandstone, and wood. “He often combined materials—wood for the handle, stone for the tool,” says Shailendra. “These implements are monumental in scale but they aren’t functional. They honour labour—often invisible—that rarely gets the same space as a portrait or a figure. Patel gives them that space.”
Animals and nature recur across his sculptures and canvases not as part of a formal series, but as recurring motifs. His ‘Animal 3’ (2016) in granite and ‘Bird’ (2004) in pink stone reflect this affinity, while his standalone paintings capture tranquil forests, mountains, and creatures with meditative stillness. “As a sculptor, he had to be personally and spiritually connected to the subject,” says Shailendra. “He grew up in an agricultural household. That rootedness, that instinctive pull toward nature, is in everything he made. It wasn’t just representation—it was belonging.”
His travels also shaped his art, especially in his works on paper. From his 1986 trip to Baghdad, he created ink drawings of the monuments and landscapes he saw. In his 2007 ‘Mexico’ series, he translated stories from his journey into visual memory: a snake inside a cactus, or figures in a tour vehicle—each a fragment of place, rendered in line and form.
Experimenting with form
Patel was no one-trick pony—his work wasn’t confined to canvas or stone. “It was important to show not just Nagji Patel the sculptor,” says Shailendra, “but how his practice evolved—his thinking, his forms, his engagement with diverse materials.”
During his time at MSU Baroda, he experimented with wood, a less frequent but significant medium in his practice. Works like ‘Rabbit’ (1970), ‘Insect’ (1969), and ‘Bird’ (2006) reflect this phase. “Wood wasn’t a medium he used often,” points out Shailendra. “But the works you see here, show that he didn’t bind himself to any one material. Most of his work is in stone, but you can see experimentation everywhere, even in his drawings.”
His mixed media works are a testament to this. In these, Patel paints over photographs and paper cuttings—juxtaposing images of people with sketches of a dancer’s body, or placing a couple inside the silhouette of a person’s head. A dancer morphs into a swan, a sparrow, or strikes a yoga pose that echoes both. These pieces feel like freeform doodles, playful yet thoughtful—capturing the restless, creative energy that ran through all of his work.
With 'Still, They Speak', the directors of Akar Prakar, Reena and Abhijit Lath, is grateful to bring Nagji Patel’s works back into public view after many years. “A simple soul—rooted, anchored, connected, and childlike—are some words that immediately come to mind when we think of Nagji Patel and his work,” they note. “Presenting this retrospective feels completely in sync with our gallery’s vision—to honour and document the legacy of artists like Nagji bhai.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the artist anymore,” notes Shailendra. “But the title Still, They Speak is because—even if he’s not here—his works speak for themselves — of a practice that was honed over years. He learned through process, through travel, through a deep dedication to the medium itself. That’s what makes these sculptures so unmistakably his.”
On view at The Stainless Gallery, New Friends Colony till August 11
