The retrospective of the 50 years of artist Sudhir Patwardhan’s works, Cities: Built, Broken – 50 Years of Picturing Life in the City is a journey through the artist’s oeuvre, of finding himself from his 20s, when he was starting out, to the present when, as septuagenarian, he has made a space for himself at the table as a contemporary Indian artist of renown.

As one walks through the two floors of the Durbar Hall Art Centre where the paintings are on show, one cannot but acknowledge the privilege of what the show offers. Especially the opportunity of speaking to the man behind the works. For Sudhir Patwardhan Mumbai has been a long-time muse, the city and her people — the people on the locals, on the road, and those who inhabit spaces that are not ‘visible’. 

Untitled
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT

His engagement with the city, as an artist, started in the 1970s when he moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) from Pune having completed his medical education. “I had decided that I wanted to be an artist, so I moved to Bombay,” says Sudhir, who retired as a radiologist in 2005. As much as Mumbai was a culture shock in terms of the sheer number of people, the city left a deep impact, structurally, on the artist who had never lived outside Pune. 

The architecture of the city, therefore, informs a significant part of his work so much so that it has come to define Sudhir Patwardhan’s artistic oeuvre.  R Siva Kumar, the curator of this show, calls his relationship with the city and its people as that of a “reflexive thinker and an active interlocutor, not a passive chronicler”. Apart from several solo shows, he has participated in national and international exhibitions including shows at Oxford, UK (1982); Contemporary Indian Art, Festival of India, London (1982); and Coupe de Coeur, Geneva (1987). His paintings are part of public and private collections such as at the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (New Delhi), National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi and Mumbai), Jehangir Nicholson Collection (Mumbai) and the Peabody Essex Museum (US) among others.

Irani Restaurant (1977)
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT

The retrospective, he confesses, is a trip down memory lane. Putting one together, he informs, is a huge task for having to source the works from private collections and galleries. Although a retrospective, Walking Through Soul City, was held at the NGMA, Mumbai, in 2019, this, he says, is the first time he has been able to see some of his older works in a single space. He calls it a self-education, assessing his journey thus far.

Another Day in the Old City (2017)
| Photo Credit:
THULASI KAKKAT

While the ground floor mostly shows his recent works, the first floor has many of his earlier works, which are largely portraits. The shift is perceptible once his Bombay years begin. He paints what he observes, stunning oil on canvas works with a focus on people including Irani Restaurant, Truck, the Worker series, Man with Cylinder and the Running Woman. Then the city becomes a focal point around which people are placed. In the later works of the 1980s and 1990s we see architecture finding space on the canvas and people grappling with the city as in Clearing, Station Road, and Balcony for instance. 

The works post-2020 seem to turn more inward and introspective. Though his earlier paintings bustle with life, they are marked by a certain solidness. The current works have an undertone of conflict speaking of discomfort with the times and the way the city was growing.

“After the pandemic Mumbai changed, it does not look like how it did earlier. Though one is attracted to the new, the old city is gone. Roads are constantly dug up; there are metro pillars everywhere …”  The disconnect with the city, he says, started much before, “I started feeling it from around that time, though it started much before.” 

The 2002 riots, to be precise. “The connection between people was broken because of it, interactions became fewer. It led to intense self-examination, and led me to question the role of art. About what art could do, the meaning of art. One realises that art cannot change the world but still one hopes…”  

War Zone Studio is especially telling. The painting shows the artist’s studio in disarray with a sinkhole in the middle of it. He talks about being frustrated by the “heavy times, when the artist reaches a state when the studio becomes a site of destruction.”    

Talking about the painting he confesses to being assailed by self-doubt. “As one gets older there are all these doubts. It makes you ask uncomfortable questions. Like I ask myself… ‘why did I think of myself as a spokesperson of the working class? Why think that they don’t have a voice? What is the truth as representation? The relationship between realism and abstraction in art. One thinks about all these things and hopes there are some answers!” 

The retrospective Cities: Built, Broken, presented by the Kerala Lalithakala Akademi in association with Vadhera Art Gallery, on at Durbar Hall Art Centre concludes on September 28.

Published – September 20, 2025 11:00 am IST