Artist Profile - Satish Gujral

Satish Gujral is in Mumbai after three years. At a preview of his paintings and sculptures in the courtyard of the magnificent heritage Deutsch Bank building , the artist and his stately wife Kiran converse with bankers, gallery owners and other art aficionados. Gujral’s exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery begins two days later, amidst a flurry of high profile viewings that include superstar Sharukh Khan, industrialists and fellow artists. For Gujral is, in many ways, a legend.

Extraordinary not only for his vast and versatile artistic talents but also for his sheer grit and gumption. His life story is a fascinating saga- born in Jhelum in 1925 in pre-partition West Punjab, he never allowed an early loss of hearing at the age of eight to come in his way, as he studied art at the Mayo School of Art in Lahore and then at J J School in Bombay. It was while studying art at Lahore, where the school’s curriculum included various techniques for stone and woodcarving, metal smithery, clay modelling, drawing and design, that the seeds of his very real versatility were sown. For Satish Gujral is remarkable in the sheer breadth of his oeuvre that stretches from paintings and sculpture to wood work, ceramic, plastic and murals.

You see his magnificent and multi-faceted talent in each sculpture and canvas in this current collection. The paintings feature a series of stunning acrylics of both human and animal figures. Each canvas has an amazing degree of complexity, working at several levels in terms of colour and texture.


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The artist uses multiple frames within the same canvas, creating a many layered effect of mood and meaning as well as a multiplicity of perspective- it is, he explains part of a conscious effort to depict the complexity and strength of his subjects, mentioning Picasso and the Cubists as influences. Gujral’s lines are akin to master draughtsman’s in many senses, clean and free flowing, perhaps an influence of his architect abilities. (He has won several awards for designing the Belgian embassy in Delhi). The use of gold and a vivid earthy maroon as well as vibrant emerald greens in contrast to pale grays and muted whites all within several geometrical loci in a single canvas is striking. Gujral has long been a student of colour and it shows. His exposure to acrylics began many years ago, when he worked in Mexico in apprenticeship to Diego Rivera and David Sequeiros. “I used to make my own colours then,” he says, adding, “And even now when acrylics are so readily available I work with a combination of commercial colours as well as my own colours”.

Another feature that distinguishes a lot of Gujral’s work is the influence of mural art. The artist has long held for the need to discover an individual and distinct Indian style. “A work of art should be like a person,” he declares, “you should look at the painting and be able to tell it’s Indian”. Through it all, the fame and the fortune, Gujral remains essentially his own person and in many ways the anti-thesis of a lot of very media savvy artists of today.