For ALMOST 50 years, Sudhir Patwardhan has relentlessly put Mumbai on canvas after canvas. Little has escaped his painterly eye. The city’s working class, the communal riots of 1992, the mill-to-mall “progress” in both construction and economy — Patwardhan has been able to zoom in on and zoom out of Mumbai. One would think that by this time he would have had enough of this megacity. But, that’s not the case. On November 29, the artist’s first ever retrospective opened at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai. Titled Walking Through Soul City, and on till February 12, the retrospective is curated by Nancy Adajania and supported by The Guild Art Gallery. With more than 200 works, the show emphasises the artifice and the elaborate constructions of spatial planes in his urbanscapes. Is this really Mumbai or a Mumbai of Patwardhan’s mind? On a quiet afternoon at the NGMA, the Thane resident and former radiologist, who turned 70 this year, is seated near an industrial landscape he painted in 2017. He will walk us through his Mumbai, he says. As we meander through the exhibition, one thing is obvious — where most would be lost in the big city experience, Patwardhan found himself and his art. Excerpts: As a young man who relocated to Bombay from Pune in 1973, what were your earliest impressions of the city and how did they impact your art? The scale of the city was one thing that really shook me. At that time, I was working at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital and then at King Edward Memorial Hospital in Parel. Staying in Tardeo or Girgaum and travelling to Thane — the train went on and on, the city doesn’t end. Then there was the scale of humanity. My focus went to the people. I used to see them sitting opposite me on the trains and I would sketch them. That was the starting point. The portraits were my way of identifying with one person at a time. The images of workers were partly ideological because I was committed to the Left ideology but I had started to rethink it in the sense that the unions weren’t doing things right. I had begun to question the Utopian ideal of a classless society. The individual figures represented both the qualities of the class and they were individuals as well. But the crowd was also a positive thing for me. I wasn’t entirely daunted; I loved being a part of it, climbing the footbridge at the railway platform or the feeling of everyone going in one direction. Many of your paintings have obvious visual markers that indicate particular locations, such as Lower Parel or Ulhasnagar. Is it Mumbai or a composite of your various experiences of Mumbai? They are both. They are about Mumbai experiences but they are restructured. In Nullah (1985), what you see is Thane, the hills are of Mumbra across the creek, but it isn’t as if there is any one point in Thane that I can take you to where you will have this view. These are various elements from various parts, but the overall experience is of being in Thane for years together. Mumbai Proverbs (2014, commissioned by Mahindra Group chairman Anand Mahindra and wife Anuradha) is the experience of being in Mumbai for 40 years. If you look at Bylanes Saga (2007), the lower part of the painting is from Govandi and on top, it’s Thane. The woman and child in it were from a sketch that stayed with me for almost 10 years. I knew that sometime it would add up into a larger painting. You have a sense that something important is here. The buildings and streets in your paintings take on a maze-like quality. Nancy Adajania, in her curatorial note, writes about how you create conceptual maps of the places you paint. Yes, they are mindscapes. For me, it’s not as if I have observed a certain place and I want to portray it as it is. I observe places and, simultaneously, there are certain structures, a certain rhythm that evolve in the mind. There is mapping, which incorporates certain elements from that place, but which you also bring forth from your mind. So, you restructure reality. One can see the influence of miniature traditions and Renaissance figures in your works. What does it mean to bring them into the cityscapes that you paint? Different traditions give you different ways of structuring reality. There is a Chinese tradition, Indian miniature tradition, the Renaissance, and within each, there are more. They give you ways of putting your experience across. For example, Bylanes Saga has an Italian altarpiece structure. Indian miniature painting is prominent in Nullah because you move from bottom to top and there is a mixture of perspectives — you are looking down at some things and looking up at some things. The big painting, Mumbai Proverbs, derives in some sense from Japanese screens, with its accordion-like structure. In many of your portraits, the figures seem pensive, at times even sullen. Mirth is a rare emotion. Is this your view of Mumbai’s people? A friend once told me that the most difficult thing to paint is laughter or smiling people. Compared to photographs, where everyone is smiling, that happens rarely in painting. I wonder why. Maybe it is difficult to make laughter convincing. There is probably something at the heart of the artistic experience that draws you closer to tragedy. Tragedy, not in the sense of being sad or glum, but that ultimately our lives are tragic with struggle, not the struggle of material things but the seeking of purpose. Violence is a prominent theme in many of your works, including this year’s Marchers. Do you see Mumbai as a city of violence? One has been more conscious of violence in Mumbai since 1992 and even in the early parts of this century. The underlying level of violence is more palpable now. This is true of Mumbai but also of the whole country. This kind of disregard for basic values, this marching ahead and bulldozing through is very disturbing. Where is it leading us? Painting was my way of registering the violence. It took me four years to make Riot (1996). After 1991, I did drawings but one couldn’t match the actual horror that one had heard of. I said laughter is the most difficult thing to paint, but violence is also the most difficult thing. Any extreme is difficult. The city that you shifted to in the 1970s is not the same anymore. Do you ever think of leaving Mumbai? No. I think the city made me as an artist. The decision to come to Mumbai was made for art. I already knew I wanted to paint people and Mumbai gave me that, the way in which it registered social and political changes at every step, its many disappointments. So, there is no question of not wanting to be in Mumbai. There is no escape.
