For over five decades, Sudhir Patwardhan has ardently championed the proletariat in his art. It is hard to imagine another artist who has captured the struggles, dreams and dilemmas of urban existence with such a penetrating and sympathetic gaze, constantly poking us in the ribs to remind us what it means to be human. In a painting called Aspire, we see three commuters on a local train lost in thought as the railway footbridge above teems with people at peak hour. Roadside Tales shows residents of a slum sharing space with humans and zooming cars, while Gateway to the Future perfectly underlines the chasm between modernity and reality. Born in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, these works characterise Patwardhan’s ongoing artistic evolution as he searches for a language that will allow him to continue describing the world around him as boldly and truthfully while remaining faithful to the dictates of figurative art. “After the pandemic, the city had changed so much. There were these new coastal roads, flyovers and the zigzagging metro lines, the landscape had become very different. My first thought was, ‘How does one visualise a city in transition’?” Patwardhan asks.
His most recent body of work sees the septuagenarian taking on a fresh challenge—the infrastructure boom transforming his long-time muse, the city of Mumbai. “Looking at what’s happening in Mumbai today, one feels impressed with all this development but simultaneously, one also wonders where will all this so-called push for progress ultimately lead us and how it will reshape our cities and our lives?” asks Patwardhan, who probes this theme in his latest solo show, sardonically titled Cities: Built, Broken. This travelling exhibition debuted at the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi earlier this year before stopping over at Mumbai’s iconic Jehangir Art Gallery and Tri Art and Centre in Kolkata. The show, which also had a prestigious preview at Frieze in London, is now headed to Kochi where it will open at the Durbar Hall Art Center in September.
While the 76-year-old artist’s love affair with Mumbai is rather well known, he has always identified himself, above all, as “a painter of people”. Often visually striking and masterfully composed with knowing references to art history, his work carries political and social connotations. The new paintings are no exception. The powerful acrylic work that gives the exhibition its title was intended as a commentary on recent instances of ‘bulldozer politics’. In another painting, we find a huge gathering on the street with a man emerging in the crowd holding up Babasaheb Ambedkar’s portrait. There’s also a scene from an Irani cafe, a typical motif in Patwardhan’s art, but this time, the sweet milky brew and khari biscuit is tinged with the news of conflict and war. War Zone Studio is perhaps the most emblematic of these images. It shows a helpless artist, wrestling with the inability to do anything to stop a war.
Patwardhan, who was a practicing radiologist until 2005 and became a full-time artist only after retiring from his medical career, admits that these paintings began as a riff on the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. “When I was young, I used to think of myself as a spokesperson for the proletariat. In many ways, my work as a doctor was an extension of this life philosophy,” acknowledges Patwardhan, who originally hails from Pune but has lived in Mumbai since 1973. “Even today, painting ordinary people gives me immense hope and joy,” he insists. Looking back, does he feel his art has made any difference? Could he have done more as a painter and doctor? “Never enough, never enough,” he shakes his head.