Walking Through Soul City Ek Sair Ruh ke Sheher mé

Sudhir Patwardhan: A Retrospective

- Nancy Adajania

The drawn curtain hides the lake, shimmering like a web of diamonds in the afternoon sun. In his home in Thane, Sudhir Patwardhan unveils his new painting, ‘Nagrik’. In it, four figures levitate above a cityscape like colossi rising from yet claimed by an Escheresque patchwork of buildings that alternately recedes from and advances towards us.

It is not unusual to encounter ordinary citizens fashioned as monumental beings in Patwardhan’s paintings. ‘Running Woman’ (1977) is one such, inspired by the larger-than-life figures in Mexican murals and offered as a testimony to the resilience of the working woman. But what we encounter here is more than a simple valorization of the subaltern body. These figures who float above rooftops have released themselves, however momentarily, from the hegemony of social structures.