Sudhir Patwardhan (b.1949)

Christie's London, 16 October 1995, lot 36

There are some very small scattered surface abrasions and accretions, only visible upon close scrutiny. There is slight wear to the edges of canvas and a small undulation on the surface, in the upper right corner. This painting is in good condition, as viewed.
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Sudhir Patwardhan is a retired radiologist and self-taught artist who began to paint in the 1970s after he moved to Bombay from Pune. Observing the abandonment of the textile mills in the city and the influx of migrant workers into the suburbs where he lived, Patwardhan explored the alienation endured by devastated and displaced communities. His paintings are a representation of the landmark social and political changes that were rousing Bombay at the time.

Actively engaged in politics, with firm Marxist views, Patwardhan’s art is a reflection of his sympathies for the marginalised underclasses. Class differentiation, social mobility or lack thereof, poverty and urbanisation, are addressed throughout his corpus of works. Incorporating his own style of realism, Patwardhan represents his subjects and surroundings in an accessible manner, so that his work is not only portraying the masses, but is also painted for them.

Patwardhan was an adherent of the Baroda School's development of Narrative Figuration. Like his contemporaries Bhupen Khakhar, Gieve Patel and Gulammohammed Sheikh, Patwardhan chose to depict personal and contemporary histories within a format that shows multiple contemporaneous vignettes within the same image. Here, Patwardhan illustrates a group of people living in an impoverished tenement building or chawl. Chawls are abundant in Mumbai, and were built  in the early 1900s to house the population of migrant labourers coming to the city to work. This painting is a portrayal of daily life in such chawls. The composition at eye level draws the viewer into the scene allowing one to sympathise with the subject and get a glimpse of the inner workings of such spaces. The lack of privacy coupled with the intimate nature of living in such close quarters is cleverly highlighted in this work.

‘Patwardhan has continued to paint “peopled landscapes” that document and respond to changes in Bombay and Thane […], he has also investigated interiority and relationships at close range. Turning inward, provoked perhaps by the riots and sectarian violence that besieged Bombay in the early 1990s, Patwardhan in much of his work from this time reflected on middle-class domestic life and even private questions of the self. […] The work, and Patwardhan’s subsequent dual engagements with figuration and landscape, is evidence of his commitment to the articulation of “people” and the environment, and his constant questioning of the artist’s role and intervention in the surrounding urban environment.’ (Susan Bean, Midnight to the Boom: Painting in India after Independence, London, 2013, p. 212).