Satish Gujral

There is minor wear and creasing along the edges of all three prints. Small areas of discolouration and foxing due to age are also visible, most notably in the lower left of the works. These etchings are unframed.
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Painter, sculptor, muralist, architect and interior designer, Satish Gujral has been described as a true 'renaissance artist' whose work marks a lifelong journey of experimentation within a range of media and forms of expression. In 1952 Gujral won a scholarship to apprentice at the Palacio Nationale de Belles Artesin, Mexico under Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. Siqueiros along with Rivera and Orozco had established Mexican Muralism, a tradition of painting large-scale images of protest and nationalistic messages on public buildings. Gujral's political leanings at the time were to the left so he felt an instant affinity with the Mexico's Communist art establishment. He stayed until 1954 and it was during this time that both India and Mexico were experiencing significant social and political change. 'As a parallel set of circumstances, India was emerging from the long shadow of imperial rule, just as Mexico sought to assert its cultural identity against a social fabric wrecked by revolution.' (G. Sinha, 'Satish Gujral, A Singular Journey', Satish Gujral An Artography, Roli Books, New Delhi, 2006, p. 11). Gujral’s discontent with the social situation in India during the partition fueled this form of artistic output and cemented his interest in the subject. 

Each of these etchings has been adapted from a series of oil paintings that Gujral painted between 1949-54. The paintings have been published in multiple publications including a monograph on the artist published by the Lalit Kala Akademi (1970) and Satish Gujral: An Artography (Lustre Press, Roli Books, 2006), a seminal publication accompanying the artist’s retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi. Art critic, Madhu Jain posits “…Not only did he witness it (partition); he was with his father when he helped people cross over to nascent India in 1947. Those images were translated into paint, the horrifying sense of immediacy intact, the figures isolated in their convoluted lines of agony: the shrieks of the trauma of Partition can still be heard from these canvases. Mourning, Days of Glory, Christ in Wilderness are considered by critics to be Gujral's epiphany.” (Madhu Jain in conversation with the artist in IndiaToday.in, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/partition-provided-me-a-reason-to-discover-my-inner-temperament-satish-gujral/1/349137.html)