Project 88 is pleased to present Sudhir Khastgir: The Rhythms of Refuge – a retrospective of the noted modernist and pedagogue, Sudhir Ranjan Khastgir (1907 – 1974), in collaboration with Galerie 88, Kolkata. For the first time, an expansive curation of his paintings, drawings, and prints, will be exhibited in Mumbai, curated by art historian Prof. R Siva Kumar, as a tribute to the reclusive artist, who was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1957. Covering a dynamic range of subjects and artworks, across nearly three decades of the artists oeuvre, this exhibition traces Khastgir’s distinct painterly style, wherein his brush often turned into a dynamic chisel, as art critic Mukandi Lal (1885 – 1982) noted, “[Sudhir] produces very large, powerful, expressive drawings and paintings; vitality and pose being their great quality. He is always moving onward and often changing.” [1]
Born in 1907 in Chittagong in present-day Bangladesh, Sudhir Khastgir was an early student of Nandalal Bose, at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, and a classmate of Ramkinkar Baij. Subsequently, the artist continued his studies in Lucknow and Bombay, before joining the Scindia School, Gwalior, as a teacher, followed by the Doon School in Dehradun, where he continued to teach for over twenty years – giving many of India’s future bureaucrats, political leaders, and artists their first taste of visual arts and crafts. Recollecting Khastgir on the occasion of his birth centenary, a student wrote: “He was truly soft spoken, gracious, and caring; he never displayed any trace of the grievous tragedy that struck him early in his married life. He bore his wound with the courage and fortitude and never allowed it to shroud his cheerful disposition.” His daughter, Shyamali Khastgir, who was only ten months old when her mother died, remembering her father on the same occasion wrote: “[He] was a very introvert person by nature. Neither deep emotion nor cheerfulness of his mind were ever expressed.” Yet a dynamic depth of emotion emerges in his art, as Prof. R Siva Kumar notes in his curatorial essay on this exhibition:
“Anyone looking at his paintings and drawings carefully will not fail to notice that his flowering trees and dancers are not merely joyful but as ecstatic as his representations of passionate lovers. An energy that borders on libidinal outpouring runs through their bodies. Far from being superficial and repetitive, they spring from a deep and insatiate desire tamed and expressed in choreographed dance rhythms, almost as forceful as the inner anxiety that set Van Gogh’s landscapes awhirl. Art, for [Sudhir Khastgir], was a refuge from a disquiet life, a means of vicarious fulfilment, and as personal as it could get.” [3]
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[1] ‘An Exhibition of Khastgir’s Art’, by Mukandi Lal, The Orient Illustrated Weekly, 17 August 1947.
[2] ‘Sudhir Khastgir: The Rhythms of Refuge’, Prof. Siva Kumar, Exhibition Essay, 2024.