Last year, Himmat Shah had its biggest single exhibition. I met the artist at the Bikner House in New Delhi, where he congratulated me with a strong, warm hand and hearty smile. There was no ink that we would lose it soon. Shah died in Jaipur at the age of 91 on 2 March; He leaves a body of work behind which brings abstraction and modernity to Indian sculpture expression.

Himmat Shah | Ninety and later: a tour of an independent imagination Performed the width of the work of the modernist sculptor – their bronze and terracotta sculptures and the selection of old and new pictures. It was a monumental tribute to an artist, whose work is mainly presented in place of the museum instead of commercial art galleries.

“Himmat Shah embraced the nature of the liberation of art with a bohemian’s free-elevation, and naturally appeared to be associated with ‘local’. He left anything, which he considered exaggerated, and it would not synchronize with his discovery of creative fulfillment, “Kiran Nadar Museum of Art’s chief curator Rubina Crores, who was a guest consultant for the exhibition.

Roobina Karode | Photo Credit: Mohammad Roshan

Earlier, in 2016, he cured a retrospective of his sculpture work, Hammer on squareKanma in Saket. 300 tasks include-including their terracotta and bronze sculptures, silver pieces, pictures, carvings, photos and brochures-introduced a historical perspective for their work. He said, “His unknown and sensitive nature evolved into his separate and strong artistic thoughts,” he said that the beauty of Shah’s work remains to work in the same medium in his inherent disregard. He was an alchemist, “Most versatile ways to convert their medium and material”.

A unique manufacturer

Shah was born in 1933, Lothal, Gujarat. Growing close to one of the major sites of the Indus Valley Civilization, shaped their sensations, giving them a strong meaning of history and culture. A local potter’s furnace tour and making toys with his mother also had a profound impact on him.

A file photo of Shah

After attending the JJ School of Art in Bombay to train as a drawing teacher, he moved to Baroda on a government cultural scholarship, where he was inspired by artists NS Bendre and KG Subramanian. In 1967, a French government’s scholarship also traveled to the British printmaker SW Hatters and the influential ATELER 17, Art School and Studio to visit him to Paris. During this time, he demonstrated paintings in Binel de Paris.

For years he worked with Clay, created a strong artistic vocabulary and making techniques such as slip casting sculptures. His creative Ovre also spread pictures, silver relief paintings, burnt paper collages, ceramic and mural paintings – his huge brick and concrete relief could be seen at St. Xavier’s School in Ahmedabad. He built three large -scale walls of 18 x 20 feet, one of which has 40 relief murals.

Shah was actually seen to be really seen by the world of art, however, when he began sculpting bronze ends in the 80s. His rough sculptures with his Arctic are still abstract, modern forms were singular. Crores say, “In search of his own crafts, he traveled far in rural Nindland to know about many crafts and creative traditions of India.” “Over time, he absorbed and assimilated into the grammar of his visual language, who undoubtedly created a new place in the articulation of Indian modernism.”

Himmat Shah’s face in bronze

Never part of the mainstream

The Shah Group was a member of 1890, who in 1962 in Baroda Painter J. There was a collective of a 12-member artists formed by Swaminathan. Ideological, the group (in the name of the house where they met) challenged the revival approach of the Bengal School, and tried for a modernist artistic expression that was Indian – with a beauty based on folk arts, mysticism and pahari paintings. The group was still short -lived, and included artists like Jeram Patel, Raghav Kaneria and Ghulam Mohammad Sheikh. In his only exhibition held in New Delhi in 1963, Shah displayed a set of burnt paper collages.

Himmat Shah Under the mask Exhibition in 2023

Despite his contribution, Shah was never part of the world of mainstream art. He often referred to himself as a rebel, working outside most commercial circles in his studio in Jaipur. He was never aligned with popular movements.

“He was a malignant force in the modern Indian sculpture scene. He introduced innovation in his soil and terracotta sculptures with his slip technology and his expressions in the metal, “says Sheikh, a painter and a member of the fellow group 1890. He brought the abstraction of human form to sculpture reference, as well as experimental hardness and poetic sensitivity. Shah will live through his work.

The author is a critic-curator and a visual artist at night according to the day.