Akara Art

SUDHIR PATWARDHAN

Akara Modern

1949

Sudhir Patwardhan was born in 1949 in Pune. He is a self-taught artist and a practising radiologist. His tryst with art took centre-stage in the 1970s when he moved to Mumbai. Throughout his career, Patwardhan’s canvases have featured the study of the human form in various stages of urban living. His human forms permeate a sense of principle that comes from the daily performance of their chores in busy cityscapes. For him, the fascination for the human figure remains the centre of his painterly universe. His early paintings of construction workers, rickshaw drivers, and railway porters possess an expressive urgency. Patwardhan’s canvases are densely populated reflecting the hub of city life often with an emphasis on the ordinary, working man.

A monograph on his work, ‘The Complicit Observer’ was written by Ranjit Hoskote in 2004. Based on Patwardhan’s painting, in 2012, the Mumbai Theatre group Awishkar staged a play ‘Chitragoshit’. Apart from several solo shows, Patwardhan has participated in several national and international exhibitions which includes shows at Oxford, UK (1982); Contemporary Indian Art, Festival of India, London (1982); and Coupe de Coeur, Geneva (1987). Additionally, he has curated exhibitions at Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai and Sudarshan Art Gallery, Pune, and even curated shows like ‘Expanding Horizons,’ which travelled across Maharashtra.

Patwardhan lives and works in Thane, Mumbai.