A new exhibit of works by Gieve Patel has begun at New Delhi based Threshold.
The show covers a wide span of well over three decades of the veteran artist’s output. The solo presents his carefully selected works from the early 70’s right to the turn of this century, encompassing a range of styles and subjects.

In the 1970s and later 80s, the artist refined his unique ability to depict the universal experience of isolation through representations of the industrial landscape and common sites, people, and even animals. While continuing to build on the urban-centric themes, depicting the resilient figures, mid-eighties onwards he started representing violent deaths and rendered victimized torsos and heads as evident in works such as ‘Crushed Head’ (1984) and ‘Battered Man in Landscape’ (1993). These were detached from any locational contexts and specific aggressors.

Critic Beth Citron notes in an essay: “He wounded his victims imbued with empathetic sensitivity and his characteristic attention paid to the contoured shadows as well as colors at heart of the intriguing human form. Among his recent noteworthy participations are ‘Gateway Bombay’ at PEM. This major museum show in the US (2007) presented the work of 13 artists from India deeply connected to Mumbai. This booming financial and commercial hub has been at the heart of the artist’s practice.

Gieve Patel was one of the participants at the show. His ‘Two Men with Handcart’ had saturated tones of orange and pink that created a dense urban background, against which two figures - laborers pausing for a brief moment in their grueling workday, apparently deep in conversation - were centered right at the bottom of his canvas, probably.

His earliest solo exhibit was in Mumbai almost four decades ago (in 1966), followed by shows at Kunika Chemould, New Delhi and Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, in 1975. The versatile artist has also published several compilations of his poems. His retrospective will travel to Chemold Prescott in Mumbai early next year.