Of Worlds Within Worlds : Gulammohammed Sheikh, A Retrospective

Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) presents a landmark retrospective celebrating the life and works of the eminent artist, poet, and pedagogue Gulammohammed Sheikh. This exhibition will be one of the most extensive showcasing of Sheikh’s creative oeuvre of six decades and more, through a display of more than 190 artworks.

Sheikh’s art and extended creative engagement as poet, pedagogue, and author transcends sectionalised linear histories and fixed identities. His pictorial corpus has been enriched through referential excursions into the past and present of cultural and art history. Bringing to viewers his gouaches, oil paintings, pen and ink drawings, graphic prints to digital collages, accordion books, poems, photographs, ceramic sculptural objects to large-scale structures and installations such as the Kaavad, the exhibition will trace his artistic evolution from early explorations of personal memory and locale to monumental works that hold critical commentaries on current realities and celebrate collective humanity.

Curatorially, the exhibition deciphers Sheikh’s multi-dimensional practice, especially through his modes of space-making, art historical referencing and evolving of a visual language enriched and nuanced by acts of story-telling. The retrospective will map Sheikh’s artistic evolution, beginning with his formative years in Baroda during the 1960s to his more recent works.

Complementing the artworks, the exhibition incorporates archival material, including Sheikh’s poetry, pedagogical writings, letters, and early publications, such as the magazines he collaborated on with Bhupen Khakhar. His sketchbooks and notebooks—filled with notations, preliminary sketches, offer a rare glimpse into his creative process, capturing the raw and instinctive nature of artistic ideation.

The exhibition will have more than a hundred selected works displayed from KNMA’s collection with important loans from institutions and private collections.