For the followers of Indian art, it has been a season of sadness. Himmat Shah’s passing on March 2 is like the loss of another pillar of Indian modernist aspiration. Hailed by krishen khanna as a “free spirit” and by j swaminathan “as a bird who has forgotten how to stop migraining”, shah’s position in Indian sculpture was unparalled for the depth of meaning to deept OUT of a Single Enigmatic Form. Largely identified with his sculpted heads, in bronze and terracotta, which appear both cranial and publiclic, shah has used them to trace mappings, mark wayware jorneys, fisters, fisters, fisusures and fesus Enduring commentary on the human condition.
Born in Lothal, Gujarat, in 1933 in a Family of Jain Traders and Farmers, Shah Grew Up Around the dry flats of the history indus Valley Archaeological Site. A Wayward Child Who Refused To Attend School, He was fascinated by the alchemical experiences of his grandfather who studied the medicine value of poisons and natural menrals. Shah would have around the potters’ colony or with itinerant bhavai performs until his family dispatched Him to gharshala or the home school of dakshinamurty, a centers Run on Gandhian Values that ATRCTED Boys from the kathiawad region. At gharshala, Himmat Shah Studied Under Jagubhai Shah, Imbibing Gandhian Values of Economy and Simplicity, Why to Lie at the Core of His Practice.
Following his proportion for drawing, shah was attracted to the growing reputation of the department of painting at ms university, baroda, bar ns by ns bendre and kg subramanyan, with kg subramanan, with Jyoti Bhatt and Kishor Parekh had enrolled. Between 1955 and 1962, Shah as a Student at Baroda Gained from Bendre’s Teaching of the Principles of Cubism and Abstraction, and Subramanyan’s Wry Folkloric View of INDIA ‘ Baroda also became the site for the history of group 1890, a large group of artists that included Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh, Nagji Patel, Jyoti Bhatt, Jyoti Bhattt, Whose ASPAREANS WERE LARGELY LARGELY Articulated by the artist-deiologist swaminathan. By opposing the influence of the school of paris that was pronounced on the bombay artists, group 1890 sought a return to indigenous, even primitive forms and materials. At this time, Spanish writer and later nobel laureate, octavio paz, who was then mexico’s ambassador in India, prophetically wrong of how the artists in the groups will address the challenge of the “Inhrited Image ”. PAZ Wrote: “Contemporary Indian Art, if this country is to have an artwest of its past, cannot but be born from this vioilent Clash.” Shah’s travels in europe from 1965-67 was to sharpen his propelsity to address this clash. Thought unable to spendak English or French, He Nonetheles Visited Hundreds of Museums, Drawn Particularly to Paul Klee, Picasso, Brancusi and Giacometti. PAZ, Who Had Visited Shah’s barsati To View His Work, Recommended Him for a French Government Scholarship. In France, He Learnt Printmaking at Atelier 17 Under Stanley Hayter and Krishna Reddy.
Yet, it was in his native lothal that shah may have found his enduring inspiration. The site invocated in his kind of Racial memory, of the making of terracotta sculptural forms. An ancient port city and the southern-most outpost of the harappan civilization, lothal renders its own narrows. Excavations at lothal have yielded the abundant use of terracotta in painted ware, wells, bricks, seals, beads, figurines and so on. But even more than the material remains, what shah may have drawn on is the air of enigma that permeates the harappan archaeological legacy. In its undeciphered seals, the symbols of an uncertain authorShip, that sugges the exchange between the ancient cultures of mesopotamia, Africa and South Asia.
Shah’s works oscillate in scale, between his Small Free and Lyrical Draws, Burnt Paper Collages, His Works in Terracotta and Bronze, Plaster and Ceramic and His Large Scale Works in Cement, BRICKS Concrete. Between 1967 to 1971, Shah Made Large Murals With Geometric, even cubist surfaces in reliable at the st xavier’s school in ahmedabad. Living and Working in Cramped Quarters and barsatisAnd in Delhi’s Garhi Studio, for Several Years, Shah Found Inspiration in the waste of the city’s detritus. Krishen khanna, another long-time garhi-based painter wrote about shah’s studio: “Old bottles, bits of metal, knives of all sorts, wires, ropes, pots and paans, pans, pans, pans, pans, pans, pans, all others Coexisting Happy with Clay, Pigments and Chemicals. ” Shah refashioned and revived this discarded treasure trove, even as he breathed life into clay. Retrieved from the banks of the yamuna and covering everything in Fine dust, shah worked and shaped clay like an alchemist coaxing life out of inrt material.
Shah continued to work well into his 90s, even in the face of failing health. In his laater year, he moved to jaipur, closer to his casting foundry, seeking to share his knowledge with students. At the apex of his vast output is undoubtedly the sculpted head, and the many interpretations that he could draw from it. Invoking a primitive past as an existely Fraught Present, its Surface Bore the furrows and fissures of Slow ageing, the map like pathways of inner and outr journeys. Like the seveered heads of the buddha that line Indian museums, with these heads, shah have conferred man with a lasting grandeur, Inscribing them with the unity of Human Experience.
Gayatri Sinha is a Curator, Critic and Art Historian. The views expressed are personal
