The Urban-scapes in Sudhir Patwardhan’s Cities: Built, Broken

Vadehra Art Gallery presents a solo exhibition by renowned Mumbai based artist.

Vadehra Art Gallery is excited to announce a solo exhibition titled Cities: Built, Broken by the senior contemporary artist Sudhir Patwardhan, who is based in Mumbai. The exhibition showcases a comprehensive selection of around 65 recent pieces, including both large and small canvases, as well as drawings of various sizes. Some works from this exhibition were previously displayed at FRIEZE No. 9 Cork Street in London in October 2024.

Cities: Built, Broken will open at the contemporary gallery in Vadehra Art Gallery space on 4 February, as part of the Defence Colony Gallery Night and will stay on view until 4 March 2025.

Sudhir Patwardhan’s view of the urban landscape

Patwardhan’s artistic work aims to illuminate the nuanced complexities and collective experiences of the human condition, shaped and expressed in a range of discursive contexts: from the urban landscapes of Thane and Mumbai in India, to the unexpected green spaces that occasionally interrupt urban expansion, and the atmospheres of constructed environments that seem to reveal the inner lives of their inhabitants. His profound empathy for his surroundings leads him to narrate subtle yet compelling stories of his protagonists – a subaltern, rising middle class rooted to the locales they occupy through varying intensities of emotion.

Having a background in medicine, Patwardhan demonstrates a deep comprehension of the human form, including its psychological distortions and physical variations, drawing early influences from Cézanne and Picasso to refine his vision. In this latest collection, Patwardhan’s well-regarded visceral realism investigates various conflicts and imbalances, such as class struggles, the dichotomy between the material and the spiritual, and the emotional dynamic of community life.

The shifting deportment of his figures across a series of charged slice-of-life scenes offer a moving portrait of the bustling annals of cities, where capitalist consumption, gentrification and the erosion of natural spaces are but few of the contested arguments about what constitutes urban progress. He brings us a visual meditation on the geometric correspondences between various kinds of structures growing out of anarchic infrastructural development or a kind of organized chaos. Moreover, by prioritising the psychology of his subjects within their contextual parameters his compositions impress upon us landscapes, both real and symbolic, shaped by human tactility and dominance.

Experiencing the city with Sudhir Patwardhan

In the exhibition essay, art critic and curator Gayatri Sinha writes: “Sudhir Patwardhan’s vision of the city of Mumbai as a spatial metaphor appears to have come full circle. The vast panoramas of the city under construction that he painted in the 1980s and 1990s, of structures rising from acres of muddy land, now return in a Kafkaesque horror of overgrown metal and concrete. The occasional figure on building sites of that time has made way for truncated bodies hemmed in by traffic on meagre pedestrian routes, even as flyovers, elevated walkways and bridges appear to oppress and congest the bodies. Viewing and photographing passing figures on the streets, Patwardhan draws out a wealth of meaning in these daily, grinding rites of passage, and the profound alienation that city spaces engender. If architecture is the measure of space then the human community must endure its class hierarchies, collapsed structures and fragmentation.” 

The show will also subsequently travel to Mumbai, Kolkata and Kochi. The exhibition dates and venues are as follows: Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai (March 2025); 53/2/2 Hazra Road, Ballygunge, Kolkata (April 2025); and Durbar Hall Art Centre, Ernakulum, Kochi (6–30 September 2025).

About the artist: Sudhir Patwardhan

Born in Pune, Maharashtra, in 1949, Sudhir Patwardhan graduated in medicine from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, in 1972, and practised as a radiologist in Thane from 1975 to 2005. The social fabric of the bustling cityscapes of Thane and Mumbai and the lives of its inhabitants – particularly a subaltern, rising middle class – are a continuing source of inspiration for Patwardhan, who demonstrates a tremendous empathy towards his surroundings.

Patwardhan’s work has most recently been exhibited at the Barbican Centre, London in a group show titled The Imaginary Institution of India, curated by Shanay Jhaveri, in 2024.
Patwardhan’s paintings are included in many prominent public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Mumbai; Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi;

The artist lives and works in Thane, near Mumbai, India.

About The Gallery

Representing a roster of artists across four generations, Vadehra Art Gallery was established in 1987 with a passion to pioneer South Asian art around the world. Vadehra Art Gallery’s active and comprehensive programming takes the form of carefully curated and frequent exhibitions at two prominent locations in Delhi, alongside art events, engaging conversations and a growing digital platform. With a maturing global presence, the gallery continues to present curated projects at prestigious art fairs and institutional venues around the world. The gallery ventured into publishing in 1996, in addition to contemporaneously producing literature on ongoing exhibitions and artist projects.

Feature Image Credit- Vadehra Art Gallery