In 1947, with the subcontinent shrouded in grief and trauma unleashed by the Partition, a 22-year-old Satish Gujral decided to stay back in Jhelum (now in Pakistan) with his father for a few months, even as the rest of his family migrated to India. For eight months, day and night, he ferried refugees in a truck across the border and witnessed unhinged violence – pillage, arson, rape, murder. All this, punctuated by moments of compassion, rare moments of brotherhood.
It was these moments that led Gujral to paint his iconic series on the Partition, which was a lilting portrayal of loss, displacement, anguish and sorrow. “His work does not come from a reactionary point of view. He silently retreats into his studio in Shimla, thinks about what has happened and his work becomes about suffering, lamentation, how people have turned against each other. That poignancy in his work is what captured the art community. Hungarian art critic Charles Fabri called him a genius in 1952,” said art curator Kishore Singh, as he led a small group of people through an exhibition of Gujral’s work at Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) on a cold Thursday evening.
The centennial exhibition celebrates the Padma Vibhushan artist – painter, sculptor, muralist, architect, fighter – like few retrospectives in the past have. Each section reveals a different phase of the artist. His early works take you to Jhelum, where he grew up; his Partition series evokes a unique sadness (Mourning en mass, Desolation, Agony in the Garden on display); his work from his Mexico years give a glimpse into the loneliness he felt there; his experiments with textile, wood (burnt and bent), metal reveal a restless mind that remembered early lessons from the Mayo School of Arts in Lahore; his work after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 showcased him as a political artist unafraid to take a stand; and then there is his tryst with romance and lust.
The exhibition — an initiative of the Gujral Foundation — is on display till March 30, and has been curated by Kishore Singh. The retrospective lays bare his struggles from a young age, when he lost his hearing in an accident – a moment that goes on to shape Gujral as an artist. A small enclosure tells that story, how he slipped in a river, injured his leg, and woke up to silence, unable to hear his mother’s voice.
“He was eight at the time. When he turned 80, he went to Australia and got a cochlear implant. What he thought was going to be joyful had turned to noise so after a brief stint, he got it removed and retreated into silence that he had come to understand and enjoy,” said Singh. This experience seeped into his later work in the 2000s when the shape of the cochlear implant became art, also displayed at the exhibition.
This is not all. A book on Gujral is set to be launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival. There will be a dedicated installation at the India Art Fair 2026, architecture and design showcases at CEPT in Ahmedabad, retrospectives at NGMA Bengaluru, and a concluding exhibition at the National Museum in Chandigarh.
Gujral also segued into architecture. Gujral House, the architectural landmark he designed with Raj Rewal in Lajpat Nagar, restored by his son, architect Mohit Gujral, will be open to the public from January 31 to March 15.
“The Progressives emerged when my father was growing up but he consciously stayed away… He wanted to draw the language of India; he felt their work was too western. Likewise in architecture, he didn’t go the Corbusier way. He had three main materials – plaster, brick, and Dholpur stone. They were his language and they were local materials that could withstand India’s heat,” said Mohit.
Another Gujral beauty in the city is the Belgian Ambassador’s residence in Chanakyapuri, in his typical exposed-brick style. “My father was fascinated by light. If you ask the Ambassador, he will tell you how he can tell the time by the way the light moves in that house,” said Mohit. Once upon a time, Gujral’s murals on buildings were peppered all across the city – a few still remain.
Amid the paintings and sculptures, two portraits stand out at the retrospective – Lala Lajpat Rai and Jawaharlal Nehru. Singh explained that after returning from Mexico in 1954, Gujral sought to establish himself in India and learned that a committee had been formed to commission Rai’s portrait for the Parliament. “He submitted his work but it got rejected. That painting got exhibited at Modern School in Delhi and Fabri wrote about it. Jawaharlal Nehru asked to see the work and he overruled the committee’s decision. He then commissioned his own portrait,” said Singh. The Nehru portrait, displayed near a digital print of the Rai portrait is striking – a slumped Nehru, a flower tucked into his jacket, carrying the visible weight of a young nation in the 1950s.
At the heart of the exhibition is a reconstruction of Gujral’s studio – intimate, almost intrusive. Scribbled notes, paint brushes, spectacles, clippings from early shows, photographs of friends and fellow artists line the space, including images of Frida Kahlo, whom Gujral met in Mexico in the early 1950s, along with Diego Rivera. Moving through the decades, one presence remains constant: his wife and muse, Kiran. The exhibition is a tribute to her, as much as it is to him.
“My mother was his connection to the world. Here was a man living a life of strife and isolation till he met this woman. She was also his muse, and his internal critic. They never lived a day apart and it was a symbiotic relationship so glimpses of her in this retrospective are not a conscious decision. It’s just how they were, a power couple,” said their son Mohit.