Painter, architect, fighter: A Satish Gujral exhibition

In 1947, with the subcontinent shrouded in grief and trauma unleashed by the Partition, a 22-year-old Satish Gujral decided to stay back in Jhelum (now in Pakistan) with his father fora few months, evenas the rest of his family migrated to India.

- Somya Lakha

From the centennial exhibition on renowned artist Satish Gujral at the National Gallery of Modern Art. The display is on till March 30.

(Sanchit Khanna/HT)

For eight months, day and night, he ferried refugees in a truck across the border and witnessed unhinged violence — pillage, arson, rape, murder. All this, punctuated by moments of compassion, rare moments of brotherhood.

It was these moments that led Gujral to paint his iconic series on the Partition, which was a lilting portrayal of loss, displacement, anguish and sorrow. “His work does not come froma reactionary point of view. He silently retreats into his studio in Shimla, thinks about what has happened and his work becomes about suffering, lamentation, how people have turned against each other. That poignancy in his work is what captured the art community. Hungarian art critic Charles Fabri called him a genius in 1952,” said art curator Kishore Singh, as he led a small group of people through an exhibition of Gujral's work at Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on a cold Thursday evening.