Anant Art Gallery is currently presenting Himmat Shah | Ninety and After: Excursions of a Free Imagination, an art exhibition showcasing the breadth of famed Indian modernist Himmat Shah’s work. The show is on view from September 26 - October 6, 2024 at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Bikaner House in New Delhi, and brings together a large body of Shah’s earlier drawings and sculptures, with drawings from 2020-2021. Excursions of a Free Imagination is conceptualised by Mamta Singhania, Director, Anant Art Gallery with Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA) as a Guest Advisor.

Many of these depict abstract faces, which Shah insists are not preliminary sketches for his sculpture artworks. Yet, their general likeness to the sculptures…is unmistakable.

The contemporary art exhibition is a monumental homage to Shah, whose works have primarily been presented in the museum space, rather than commercial art galleries, in the recent past. Beyond Shah’s artworks, the exhibition presents archival materials exploring his relationships with contemporaries such as F.N. Souza and Gulam Mohammad Sheikh, and documenting the works he created during his year in Paris on a French government scholarship in 1967. The show includes various books, as well as a video by filmmaker and musician Neha Karode, titled Himmat Shah: Art as Experience, which follows the artist through the city of Jaipur, where his studio is, and explores his views on art and artmaking.

The exhibition is staged across two floors in the Centre for Contemporary Art. It begins by documenting some of Shah’s terracotta murals, emphasising a commitment to experimentation through his career. The ground floor also features a section titled Under the Mask, which presents sketches created by Shah during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these depict abstract faces, which Shah insists are not preliminary sketches for his sculpture works. Yet, their general likeness to the sculptures on the floor above is unmistakable, which may lead one to read the parallels across mediums in his practice. While his work resists categorisation, it suggests a faint primitivist quality.

Upstairs, there is a wealth of documentation, such as photographs of Shah and his contemporaries, and facsimiles of old artworks and exhibition posters—the originals of which are not available—for audiences to explore. There is even material from Shah’s time as a member of the artist collective Group 1890, founded by artist and art critic J. Swaminathan in 1962. There is little material covering the artist’s time in Paris; however, a few photographs suggest that the works the Indian artist created as an etching student at S.W. Hayter’s Atelier 17 in 1967 were extremely compelling, even distinctly darker than the rest of his oeuvre. The figures in these works bear recognisably human characteristics and grin devilishly at the viewer.

Himmat Shah began his career in 1960s India, and continues to sustain a strong practice. The ongoing show by Anant Art Gallery at Bikaner House makes a strong case for reinforcing his place in the Indian art canon and introducing newer audiences to the courageously free spirit of his artmaking.

'Himmat Shah | Ninety and After: Excursions of a Free Imagination’ is on from September 26 - October 6, 2024, at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Bikaner House in New Delhi.