A BRIDGE ACROSS TIME

Himmat Shah created a career out of intransigence that became a trope in his practice as a sculptor

- Kishore Singh

I NSPIRATION came to Himmat Shah in Garhi at a time when the Lalit Kala studios in a fringe South Delhi colony were the haunt of artists on the cusp of fame.

Here, you could hope to find Krishen Khanna working on the murals for ITC Maurya, cadge a cup of tea off Manjit Bawa, watch Paramjit Singh struggle to capture the haunting light in his landscapes, drop in on Mrinalini Mukherjee for a chat, head for J Swaminathan's addas that were known for their fiery rhetoric, or join a queue of printmakers waiting their turn at the printmaking unit. When Swaminathan moved to Bhopal to set up Roopankar Museum in the Bharat Bhavan complex, Himmat Shah inherited his studio. Ved Nayar was next door and believed that Shah's elongated terracotta Heads were inspired by his practice at the time.