A Voyager Across Time

ENGAGING WITH 87-year-old Gulammohammed Sheikh’s art is like entering a pluralistic sanctuary where several interpre­tations of reality coexist. There’s seldom any room for concepts such as linearity and singularity. Binaries such as past, present and future intertwine to give way to something timeless. The ongoing Kaarawaan and Other Works at the Chemould Prescott Road gallery is Sheikh’s first solo show in Mumbai after a gap of two decades. Even though it contains a compact selection of his recent output, the exhibition, which has been organised in collaboration with the Delhi-based Vadehra Art Gallery, both illustrates and celebrates the kaleidoscopic vision of his life, personal philosophy and the essence of his art.

What is particularly striking about the first painting you encounter upon entering the gallery is that it may contain the key to all the other artworks on display here—and perhaps to Sheikh’s long and multi-hyphenated career as an artist, poet, writer, teacher and mentor. Kaarawaan stands as the show’s centrepiece. Much like the Pahari, Rajput and Mughal style of paintings that the octo­genarian has long admired, Kaarawaan draws you in with its many-splendored symbolism and a fu­sion of personal journeys with literary and artistic affinities. In this audacious and enigmatic acrylic work, painted between 2019 and 2023, the artist has captured many of his lifelong obsessions at the same time. For starters, the painting combines two of Sheikh’s enduring motifs — the ark and trees. Seeing Kaarawaan feels like you are being given ac­cess to the artist’s mind and soul. The focal point of the canvas is an ark carrying within it the personal memories of its creator through the voyage of time. The des­peration of humans, animals, birds and angels is framed by the guiding light of two of his favourite role models in the form of the 15th-century mystic Kabir, and Mahatma Gandhi. The far-right corner is dominated by references to art history, with the Italian masters sharing space with Rabindranath Tagore and Vincent van Gogh flanked by MF Husain and FN Souza. Modern art is represented by Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso among others while the branches of a ‘tree of life’ nearby serve as a paean to literary giants from Premchand to Saadat Hasan Manto. The artist even duly acknowledges his team of assistants, as he puts their names on the canvas along with his signature in Gujarati. The image of the ark in Kaarawaan is an homage to a similar rendering of a boat by Nainsukh, a promi­nent 18th-century exponent of Pahari painting.

In the book At Home in the World: The Art and Life of Gulammohammed Sheikh, Chaitanya Sambrani writes that the ark first started appearing in Sheikh’s oeuvre following the Gujarat riots of 2002 and collectively represents “the covenant of wisdom and the refuge in the world that both seem utterly unattainable.” In his work, Sheikh keeps returning to Kabir and Gandhi. Both remain two of our country’s most inspiring icons whose ideas and principles sometimes feel under threat in present-day India. It is easy to see why Sheikh has assim­ilated them into his visual vocabulary—they advocated for a common human cause transcending religious and ethnic lines. An accomplished poet himself, Sheikh first read Kabir in school. “Kabir was not very religious in the traditional sense of the word, be it as a person or as a poet. He wanted individuals to discover their own selves.

Despite Sheikh’s decision to give up oil painting in 2001 owing to a skin condition, many of the pieces exhibited in Kaarawaan bear witness to his command over several medi­ums and techniques. Although acrylic and watercolour make up most of his paintings, he has also experimented with casein, a milk-based medium.

“Living in India means living in several cultures and times. That is something I believe in. It’s the crux of my very being,” says Gulammohammed Sheikh, artist

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There is something dreamy and theatrical about the artist’s signature Kaavad series. Visitors are invited to walk around it, even though these ‘art boxes’ have no fixed frame and seem to instead revel in their capacity to blur the boundaries between sculpture, painting, collage and even written expression. For Sheikh, the Kaavad—inspired by the Rajasthani mobile story­telling devices, also known as ‘travelling shrines’—are almost like decorated books. Like elsewhere in his art, in Kaavad, too, he moves freely between different points of inquiry, themes and traditions.

Born in 1937 in the “mixed ambience of Surendranagar” in Saurashtra of Gujarat, Sheikh’s childhood was cosmo­politan where Hindus and Muslims lived and mingled peacefully. Apart from the Islamic traditions taught at home, Sheikh was equally drawn to the Hindu scriptures from an early age. In conversations, he often talks about Indian mythology and Arabic folklore such as Arabian Nights and Kathasaritsagara in the same breath— both connected through the umbilical cord of India’s syncretic culture. While writing about artist Bhupen Khakhar, in an essay titled ‘Buddy,’ Sheikh mentions an interesting anecdote. His friend Sunil Kothari’s pious mother used to think of a young Sheikh as “a Vaishnava soul born in a Muslim body.”

For Sheikh, childhood is a continent that lives in him. He left Surendranagar over six decades ago but has found himself revisiting his roots, in art and life. “Living in India means liv­ing in several cultures and times,” he once said. Nothing has changed. When asked if that statement still resonates with him, he reiterates, “That is something I still believe in. It’s the crux of my very being.”

As a young artist, Sheikh admits that his style was distinctly Expressionistic but once again the memories of childhood intervened, offering him a much-needed breakthrough. One of the turning points in his art was the painting Returning Home After Long Absence, which was conceived while reflecting on his upbringing. In this seminal work, completed between 1969 and 1973, the artist’s mother takes centre stage, against the backdrop of some of the images of the Surendranagar town­scape that hovers above her with dreamlike vividness.

Sheikh still lives and works out of Baroda, the same city where his journey as an artist started back in 1955. Enrolling at the prestigious MS University of Baroda meant the opening up of a “thousand windows” for him but the transition also meant that he had to emerge quickly from the shadows of his stalwart teachers (NS Bendre, Sankho Chaudhuri, KG Subramanyan et al) to find his own unique voice. His wife Nilima Sheikh (née Dhanda), a highly respected artist herself, says, “Gulam is a great traveller, a seeker and a perceiver. He has an interesting way of looking at art history. I prefer the term ‘history’ and not tradition because the history of art is not just an amorphous tradition. It has its specificities and its contexts and Gulam, through his dedication and deep interest in Indian aesthetics, acquired a vast knowledge of it. So, he was able to explore all these diverse genres and tried to bring them into a contempo­rary context and find meaning in them, without necessarily rejecting any of these histories and certainly, without rejecting modernism either.”

Sheikh spent three pivotal years (from 1963 to 1966) in London, studying at the Royal College of Art at a time when the swinging 1960s was at its peak and pop art was gaining traction. Yet, he was not enamoured by the prevailing trends in British art as he continued his quest for a personal idiom that was free from all sources and at the same time, all of world art history was at his disposal if it ever needed conjuring. “It is not that I was using any particular ‘ism’. I am, in fact, against any kind of -ism. Over the years, I have striven to evolve a truly personal language,” he says.

He believes that inspiration and hard work go hand in hand. “The creative process takes you through several stages, often it is a hard toil but eventually, at some point you realise now you can’t do anything more. That is when a painting is complete,” he says, before quickly adding, “But no painting is final. In my case, every painting leaves room for another painting sitting at the back of my head. So, it’s a train. It’s continuous.” Regarding his fascination with allusions to art history, he explains, “I have drawn from the great works that I have admired over the years, either Western or Indian, whether pre-modern or modern. And whatever you admire, at some level, it becomes part of your make-up and your language. So, I quote from the works of some artists or their ways of working.”

For Sheikh being a teacher and artist go hand in hand, he argues that many artists practised other professions. “Gieve Patel was a physician and a full-time painter, Sudhir Patwardhan a radiologist and a painter, Krishen Khanna was a banker and a painter. You can give some part of your time to that while leaving enough time for painting. Being a teacher doesn’t and shouldn’t come in the way of your creative act. You have to switch that role off when you approach the act of painting,” says the Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awardee, who taught art history for 18 years and painting for 11 years at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the MS University in Baroda.

“Showing someone like Gulammohammed Sheikh is like a badge of honour. More than anything, it is because he has contributed not only as an artist to the contemporary art scene but also to the canon of art history. He has been an incredible vehicle of knowledge to a vast number of students. Imagine the privilege of being in a class with Gulam as a teacher,” says Shireen Gandhy of the Chemould Prescott Road gallery, who has been a close friend of Sheikh and Nilima’s for decades and has even exhibited their contemporary and friend Bhupen Khakhar on many occasions. She adds, “We have the example of Chaitanya Sambrani who was studying economics at MS University in Baroda. He chanced upon an art history class one day and attended a lecture by Gulam. The course of his entire life changed after that. Today, Chaitanya Sambrani is one of our leading art historians, who has even written a book as a tribute to his beloved teacher.”

(Kaarawaan and Other Works by Gulammohammed Sheikh is on view at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai, till May 15)

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Shaikh Ayaz

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