Satish Gujral retrospective at NGMA Delhi: From 1947 Partition paintings to neo-tantric art, how Gujral's legacy straddles multitudes

Centenary celebrations: Satish Gujral 100 is on at NGMA Delhi till March 31, 2026.

Born in Jhelum in undivided Punjab on Christmas Day 1925, artist Satish Gujral lost his hearing when he was just eight years old - he had been playing with his friends when he lost his footing and almost drowned in the river. The string of operations that followed required general anaesthesia, a complication of which led to deafness. A retrospective of his art at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi begins with a video retelling of the incident. Indeed, the silence would become such an important part of his life and his art practice, that years later, after a cochlear implant operation in Australia made it possible for him to hear again, he had the implant removed some years later - perhaps by then he was more used to the silence, and the cacophony of the world, while initially exhilarating, wore him down eventually.

Still from a video retelling of how Satish Gujral lost his hearing as a child.

Curated by Kishore Singh, the NGMA retrospective showcases papers, paraphernalia as well as scores of works in multiple mediums made over 60-plus years - starting in the 1940s, when Gujral drew upon his personal experience of helping people cross over into India after Partition. In paintings from this period - like 'Mourners' (1947–48), 'Snare of Memory' (1954), 'Desolation' (1954) - he recalled the grief and suffering that followed the violence of Partition. The figures in these works slouch or stretch out on the floor or throw their hands up, their faces scrunched up - in agony or tears or anguish or frustration.

'Desolation' (1954), oil on board, from the collection of NGMA Delhi.

Some of these works, he painted while on scholarship in Mexico where he apprenticed with the famous muralists Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Here, he grew close to Rivera and his wife Frieda Kahlon - he writes in his 1997 memoir, which has been reissued in 2026, that he was among the pallbearers at Kahlon's funeral. Paintings from this phase capture a loneliness in him - perhaps being miles away from home and from most things that would have been familiar, took a toll. Paintings from this phase are darker, with figures casting long shadows and bearing an almost glum expression.

Self-portrait by Satish Gujral.

Despite the loneliness, his time in Mexico in 1952 was an important point in his life as an artist. In works made after the stint in Mexico, he experimented with materials and abstraction, with portraiture and sculpture, with murals made with ceramic on important buildings in North India like the Chandigarh Government Museum designed by Le Corbusier and the alphabet mural at Delhi High Court - in ways that were far from conventional.

Photo of a mural by Satish Gujral, on view at NGMA Delhi.

In a curatorial note, Singh writes: "The Mexican muralists’ (Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros) belief that art must serve the people profoundly influenced Gujral’s philosophy: art as a public, social act... Returning to India, Gujral revolutionised muralism, introducing textured, sculptural surfaces crafted from ceramic, stone, and metal. Across Delhi and Punjab, his monumental works transformed public spaces into enduring symbols of resilience and renewal—bringing art closer to everyday life and the people who inhabit it."

Curator Kishore Singh at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi.

It can be difficult to pin down Gujral and his artistic practice. Over the years, he experimented with styles, ideas, materials. He straddled the figurative and the abstract, moving from portraiture to abstraction with materials like grit inviting viewers to feel the texture and the weight as much as to see the work. Through the 1960s and 1970s, he incorporated pop culture and tantra philosophy that could be read as irreverent. In one place, an exhibition note captures the spirit thus: "Sacred geometry coexisted with satire; pleasure sat beside critique. This resulted in an unprecedented language that could be interpreted in any number of ways, both meaningful as well as playful."

Untitled (1968) by Satish Gujral. Don't miss the writing - including the stylized font on top - and symbols on the painting.

Gujral also straddled the worlds of art and architecture. In the 1970s, he was invited to design the Belgian embassy in New Delhi. The unconventional building design won him an Order of the Crown from the Belgian government. Its anthill-like, organic, exposed-brick structures; complete with arches, domes and skylights to bring in lots of natural light, are today regarded as enviable features.

A sketch of the Belgian embassy by Gujral himself.

In 1999, Gujral got the Padma Vibhushan - India's second-highest civilian honour. He would continue to work for another 20 years, but by this time, he had already built up a remarkable legacy. Kishore Singh offers another way to look at Gujral's work - across the decades, across mediums and across movements: he was a humanist responding to the events and ideas around him. If the 1947 Partition of Punjab occasioned from him paintings capturing grief and suffering that he saw firsthand and over-and-over, his burnt-wood sculptures in the aftermath of the 1984 Delhi riots evoked the turmoil of those days through both materiality and form. If his abstract works became a laboratory for mixed media works at a time when Indian abstractionists were just beginning to gain traction internationally, his murals infused a certain internationalism and modernism into Indian public art. Looking back in his centenary year, his work offers ways to look back at India through the decades, and through the eyes of one of the country's most feted modernists.