“Of Worlds within Worlds”
As part of their curricular experiences, the art students of Classes XI and XII visited an exhibition of the seminal works of Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Saket, New Delhi, on Saturday, 5th July, 2025. The collection showcased different phases and the entire range of mediums and formats explored by the master, including pencil and pen sketches and drawings, to gouache, watercolours and oils, architectural walk-through ‘kaavads’, accordion collage books, double-sided panels ‘recto-verso’ etc.
The exhibition opened with the pièce de résistance, Kaarawaan, a 21-foot canvas, dwarfing us with its presence! It depicted a massive ark, carrying the many memories from the artist’s life, and portraits of the multiple artists who inspired him. It was one of the many artworks in which he has used the collage technique, one of the features that define his work as ‘narrative’. One could see the technique recurring in many of his ‘’kaavads’, traditional wooden folding shrines that he has used as a format to explore a range of themes, from Kabir, Mahatma Gandhi to nature or historical events. The poet saint Kabir Das has, quite obviously, been a significant influence on his life and thinking, and appears repeatedly in his works.
The diverse mediums, rich and earthy colour palettes, enriched the imagination and widened the horizons of art for the students, who immersed themselves in the visual treat and lost themselves in the fascinating ‘worlds within worlds’ created by this great master! As most of them shared, they had never really seen such diverse techniques, or even this kind or level of art before, besides the scale of some of the works, and the extent of detailing in them. The impact of this experience on them is of the kind that “opens up new windows”, as one of them said, and changes their understanding of art!