The Living Legends series: Gulammohammed Sheikh and his brush with genius

Gulammohammed Sheikh grew up in a two-room house in Surendranagar, Gujarat, with four siblings and their loving parents, Tajmohammed Sheikh, who was a commission agent, and homemaker Laduben Sheikh.

Their home was in a khadki, a small group of houses built around a shared open space.

The back window would be the first frame through which Sheikh would view the world.

Even as a schoolboy, he was interested in art and literature. He spent hours after school at a local library. He was introduced to different cultures and traditions by friends and teachers too.
A schoolmate, Shantilal Shah, took him to a Jain temple, where he was riveted by the paintings. His Anglo-Indian teacher, Mr Thornley, introduced him to British watercolour artists. Sheikh read about Sufism in a magazine his father subscribed to. A teacher and poet Labhshankar Rawal encouraged his passion for verse.
At 15, while still in school, Sheikh collaborated with Rawal on the launch of a handwritten magazine called Pragati (Progress). It would feature some of the artist’s earliest work, including the illustrated advertisements that helped keep the magazine going.
As Sheikh made his way to Baroda’s MS University, then the Royal College of Art, London, and back again, he linked his lived experience across time and space, and expressed it in poems, prose, prints, sculptures and, of course, his paintings.
“We often silo artists as sculptors, installation makers, printmakers, but Gulambhai is beyond it all,” says art curator Veerangana Solanki. “In his work, there are stories within stories for the viewer to unravel,” adds Dinesh Vazirani, founder of the auction house Saffronart.
Sheikh is currently one of India’s most successful living artists.
He occupies the #2 spot on the recently released 2024 Hurun India Art List (London-based Anish Kapoor is at #1). His acrylic-on-canvas Ark: Kashmir (2015) was auctioned in December by Saffronart for ₹21 crore.
Ark: Kashmir is an example of Sheikh’s layering of stories within stories. The work features a vessel inspired by master miniaturist Nainsukh’s A Boat Adrift on a River: Illustration to a Folk Legend (1765-75).
At one end of Sheikh’s ark sits the Sufi mystic Kabir (who appears frequently in the artist’s work). At the other end is Sufi saint Shaikh Phul, drawn from a Mughal painting. Around the boat is a livid green sea inspired by Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. And within the vessel is a bluish expanse of placid water, holding likenesses of an apple tree, a goddess, whirling dervishes, the Shankaracharya temple, a Buddhist shrine and the Islamic Hazratbal shrine, all in Srinagar, together representing the diverse, multi-faith culture of Kashmir.
“Sheikh is constantly having a conversation with himself as a writer, poet and historian. All these conversations influence one another and inform his many endeavours. Not many artists can or want to do that,” says art critic, curator and historian R Siva Kumar.
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Admirers typically have to wait years to see his work. “Most artists show every three to five years, but Gulam usually takes longer. He meticulously plans his shows,” says Sonia Ballaney of Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery, which represents him.
Sheikh’s latest show, Kaarawaan and Other Stories, held from February to May, was his first in Mumbai in 20 years and his first in Delhi in more than a decade.
While preparing one of its large paintings for display, it turned out an inch would have to be folded inwards to fit the frame. Sheikh wouldn’t allow it, Ballaney says, smiling. He had the frame adjusted to fit instead.
Why? “Every part of a painting is crucial in a work of art, as every limb is in a body,” Sheikh says. “Severing any part of a painting is a violent act.”
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In his poetry too, much of which is written in Gujarati, visuals play a key role.
Over the fort like a broken loaf
sunshine sharp like radishes.
Grass and stones nestling in the ruins
of Tughlaqabad…
goes the English translation of his 1973 verse, Delhi, by Mala Marwah.
Unlike his paintings, which seek to encompass the complexities of the world, his poetry is personal. “This is one space where Gulam works alone,” says friend and fellow writer Prabodh Parikh. “There is no Gulam Gharana,” he adds, referring to Sheikh’s artistic practice of engaging junior artists and assistants to paint parts of his works.
As a guru, Sheikh has moulded generations of artists. He taught at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, from 1960 to 1963; took a break for the fellowship in London; returned to teach in Baroda from 1967 until his retirement from formal teaching, in 1993. He continues to work with young artists and apprentices at his studio in Vadodara.
Parikh believes Sheikh’s ability to befriend new generations has compensated somewhat for the many losses he has suffered. In a 65-year career, he has seen deep bonds with artists such as Nasreen Mohamedi and Bhupen Khakhar snapped by death.
What anchors him, in addition to his art, he says, is his family: wife Nilima Sheikh, also an artist; and their two children.
Things are coming full circle now, in Vadodara, the city that has nurtured him since he moved there as a teen to study art on a scholarship.
His next work will be a 15-ft-tall winged brass figure that will stand atop a 50-ft-high pillar, outside the Ark Museum that is currently being built here by industrialist and art connoisseur Atul Dalmia.
“Baroda has many public sculptures, most notably by Nagji Patel, my lifelong friend. I hope this work will add to that legacy,” says Sheikh.
He is also planning to publish a book of essays on art, written in English over the past 50 years. He is working to finalise Hemang Ashwinkumar’s English translation of his memoir, Gher Jataan (On the Way Home; 2018), which will be published by Seagull Books later this year.
“And then there are the empty canvases,” says Sheikh, “waiting for my return to the studio.”