When American astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, Gujarat-born artist Himmat Shah turned 33 years old. Shah breathed his last on March 2, aged 92, in Jaipur. That historic landing, however, would ignite an idea and lead to a series of sculptures years later. Then struck by the surreal image of a man sitting on the moon, Shah began sculpting an abstract form that symbolised this unprecedented human endeavour. The creation process was iterative; Shah experimented with clay on his wheel, grappling with the physical balance of his form much like humanity’s struggle against the moon’s gravity. The final piece, distinguished by a balancing stick and a golden moon-head, was then cast.
To watch the sculptures of Himmat Shah is to go back in time. Shah’s “Man From Moon” series (2023), which engendered 100 sculptures using diverse patination techniques, a stick in hand, sitting like Vladimir and Estragon from Samuel Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot (1953). Theatre of Absurd meets Theatre of Abstract. From that series, nine sculptures of the size 6.3 x 8.3 x 4 inches in patinated bronze are on show at the gallery. Each sculpture is borne out of history, on Earth and space. all crowned with a lustrous gold moon as the head. Or that could well be the hat the artist wears. The sheen, speckle-less moon hides the man’s face and its emotions. The man has been eclipsed by the moon, or has he been possessed by the moon?
Two bronze heads, including one with gold leaf, are also on show, sized 52 x 10 x 18 inches and 16 x 7 x 8 inches, respectively, which are from the 36 bronzes the artist created in the UK between 2007 and 2018. Each sculpture in the series echoing the artist’s meditative exploration of human tenacity.
Nine of those 100 sculptures are on display as part of the newly opened Black Cube Gallery’s inaugural group show, “Vocabulary of Vision”, in Delhi’s Hauz Khas area, on till March 23. After being in the art space since 2018, redefining contemporary Indian art, breaking away from the exclusivity of traditional white-cube spaces, Black Cube has now opened its first permanent space. Founded by Sanya Malik, the gallery brings together nine modern masters — including Himmat Shah — and 16 contemporary voices, offering a rich, cross-generational dialogue through this debut show. Other artists on show include Jogen Chowdhury, Krishen Khanna, Ram Kumar, Sakti Burman, Thota Vaikuntam, Farhad Hussain, Arunkumar HG, Sudhanshu Sutar, among others. Shah famously always remained absent from his own exhibition openings and panel discussions, to let his work and not himself stay in the limelight.
Gallerist Malik recalls the remarkable story Himmat Shah narrated to her about the genesis of the series: “On July 22, 1969 — his birthday — he read in the newspaper that man had landed on the moon. That very day, ‘Man from Moon’ was born. He immediately began moulding clay, trying to find the right position in which man would be able to comfortably sit on the moon, what his face would look like, how he would balance himself. When he finally found his sculpture, he recalled thinking to himself, ‘Woh baithne ka anand le raha hai’ (he is seeking pleasure in sitting). He was excited about giving this work a new life in the form of 100 bronzes, each with a unique patination, he said he wanted to educate viewers about the complexity and beauty of patination. Himmat ji never sought to overcomplicate his art. He famously said, ‘It is futile to attempt to decipher a work of art. Because then, you are letting reason mediate. Creativity is beyond reason; it is beyond craft and technique. You just have to experience it and enjoy it.’,” Malik says, adding “his sculptures stand as a testament to his pioneering vision in Indian art.”
If there was one artist who was literally a son of the soil, Himmat Shah was that. One of the unique voices of Indian modern art, whose entire life and abstract artistic practise was informed by the place he was born in. In 1933, in Gujarat’s Lothal, one of the southernmost sites and a flourishing port town of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, from the Bronze Age (3300-1200 AD). And it was his terracotta and bronze sculptures for which he eventually came to be known, in the latter part of his career. A loner for life, with a single-minded focus, at his Garhi studios in Delhi, and later in Jaipur, he shaped a visual modernist vocabulary that was entirely unique. Spotlights caught his presence much later in life, in his 70s, with three major retrospectives of his works coming in quick succession in recent years: “Hammer on the Square” (2016) at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, “The Euphoria of Being” (2017) at Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, and “Under the Vastness of the Sky” (2019) at Bihar Museum, Patna.
The “free spirit”, as artist Krishen Khanna called him, and “the bird” who, as J Swaminathan noted, “who has forgotten how to stop migrating”, has flown the terrestrial nest, after a lifelong quest of homing in and moving away, seeking refuge only in his art.
Shah’s sculptures, as artist Nilima Sheikh has said, foregrounds the question of rural visual culture coalescing, or being brought to coalesce, with the modern urban preoccupations of design and art. He was a spiritual seeker who looked at art as an experience, not a product, noted artist Jagannath Panda.
Shah, who dabbled masterfully across mediums: drawings (chaotic black lines), silver relief paintings (made with plaster of Paris and sand, adorned with silver paint and silver leaf/warq), burnt paper collages, architectural murals, sculptures, came to be known the most for his elongated terracotta and bronze heads, in human form. It was the “memories of playing in the pond with his friends as a child that inspired his (Shah’s) celebrated stylised heads in bronze that first appeared in the early 2000s,” wrote The Indian Express. His best-known works, the large cephalic terracotta and bronze sculptures, often called “totemic”, remind of the sculptures in a similar vein by Romanian artist Constantin Brâncuși. Shah’s sculptures also betray glyph-like indentations, harking back to his roots.
The figurative is juxtaposed with the abstract in his works. Shah saw immense possibilities in unusual forms, in found objects, which he morphed into art to give ironic representations of the world. His art, at once, stands for form and formlessness, time and timelessness, ruin/destruction and life/rebirth.
Shah’s art is also informed by complex personal experiences, as he wrote in an exhibition catalogue, “the childhood memory of horse-borne dacoits who shot and crippled my father, the disintegrating Jain household, running away from home into the Gir forests, living frugally in the Thar desert, homelessness in my urban life in Baroda and new Delhi, and my Garhi Studio, where I lived and worked for more than 20 years.” There is an obvious expression of decay, destruction, deterioration and rejuvenation in his wetted-clay sculptures.
Growing up, the boy was struck by the visiting archaeologists and historians, by travelling theatrical troupes and potters. As a pre-teen, he fled his Jain mercantile home to the dense Girnar forests, he went to a potter’s kiln to learn. His sculptures resonate with his drawings. In his early years, he would not just draw on paper but on surfaces such as stone, clay and plaster. He was later sent to Gharshala, a school affiliated to Dakshinamurty, where he studied under artist-educator Jagubhai Shah before joining the J.J. School of Art in Bombay, and then moving on to Faculty of Fine Arts at MS University Baroda, on a government cultural scholarship, during 1956-60, where he was influenced by NS Bendre and KG Subramanyan, and shared his time with painter Gulammohammed Sheikh. Sheikh, in his recent tribute to his friend on his passing wrote, “At home with terracotta and bronze, he excelled in every medium he touched. Bit of a loner in his late life, he continued to work ceaselessly even when he reached his 90s.”
In 1962, he helped found the short-lived artists’ collective, Group 1890, in whose view “a work of art stood alone, isolated from any explanatory props that the artist wanted to offer.” The group, which derived its name from the house number where its manifesto was drafted in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, composed of 12 artists, including J Swaminathan, the collective’s spokesperson and ideologue and held a single exhibition in New Delhi in 1963, attended by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. By this time, “Shah had assumed the position of a modernist engaged in the quest for a language,” writes Gayatri Sinha in her co-authored book An Unreasoned Act of Being: Sculptures by Himmat Shah (2007, Mapin Publishing). The group dispersed soon after, with each of its members continuing their own artistic practices.
That singular group show was supported by the Mexican poet and ambassador to India, Octavio Paz, who mentioned Shah’s drawings and burnt-paper collages in his essay for the exhibition brochure. At Paz’s recommendation, in 1967, Shah received a French government scholarship to study etching under SW Hayeter and Krishna Reddy at Atelier 17, Paris, where he mastered printmaking techniques such as lithography and etching, which shaped his artistic language. Art historian Geeta Kapur writes in the essay, “The Bohemian as Hermit”: “It must be ever borne in mind that Shah always works with the metaphorical… He has the ability to transform the low or mundane into high aesthetics of art. Studying the works of Himmat Shah is a study of the growth of modern Indian art and its interactions with the contemporary trends of Western art, particularly Europe.”
In 1967-71, Shah conceptualised, designed, and executed three sculptural walls in bricks, concrete and cement (18’x20’) at St. Xavier’s School, Ahmedabad. One of the walls had 40 relief murals.
Renowned curator Jyotirmoy Bhattacharya has highlighted Shah’s profound connection to his cultural roots and his capacity to imbue abstract forms with spiritual significance. His sculptures, often compared to archaeological artifacts, evoke a timeless quality that bridges India’s ancient civilisation with contemporary art. Shah stayed aware of his cultural and locational roots till the very end.
By the mid-1970s, Shah had started working on relief and sculpture in plaster, terracotta and ceramic, and by the mid-1980s, Shah had found his signature style: the deity-like gilded heads. Until then, he did not sell well, despite awards and exhibitions. He then shared a home with photographer Raghu Rai in Delhi’s Rabindra Nagar area before, in the 1990s, to Jaipur. KNMA Gallery has invested majorly in his work, which are uncompromising and not easy to forget. His last solo show was “Ninety and After: Excursions of a Free Imagination”, at Delhi’s Anant Art Gallery last year, showcasing a selection of his sculptures and earlier drawings along with recent drawings created between 2020-2021.
And, until someone puts his works up soon, the current show at Black Cube might be your last chance to see Himmat Shah’s works on display. Black Cube’s young gallerist recalls the time she spent with Shah over the years. “I watched him create magic with his hands at Bronze Age Foundry in London a few times between 2011-16 and witnessed the meditative state he entered while sculpting. In those moments, he was inseparable from his creation — he and his art were in complete unison, always one entity. One of the most captivating conversations I had with him was in July 2024, he told me, ‘I am always searching for my sculpture. My sculpture is not yet born; I’m still searching for mine. If I find my sculpture, mera jeevan sarthak hoga — my second life will begin.’ He was 91 at the time. For him, the act of creation was never final — once a sculpture was born, he would begin again,” Malik says. In the same conversation, they discussed his “Man From Moon” series.
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