For those who dabble in the world or art or identify themselves as art connoisseurs, students, and practitioners, Gulammohammed Sheikh is a familiar name. The painter, poet, art historian, and teacher whose works have been displayed far and wide now comes to Kolkata with a two-part exhibition on his printmaking processes. Titled Hand Prints / Mind Prints and curated by Pushpamala N, the exhibition is presented along with Vadehra Art Gallery in Tri Art & Culture, Kolkata.
Gulammohammad Sheikh's printmaking creations are on display in Kolkata
For anyone visiting the gallery, it is easy to lose themselves in the plethora of works and variety of printmaking techniques adopted by the artist. To make it slightly easier and segregate it, the ground floor gallery is all about hand prints or works made by hand. These range from woodcut, linocut, etching-aquatint, lithography and silkscreen from the 1950s to 2026.
Each work or series of works has accompanying literature, which makes it easier to understand the influences of the period in which they were made. While some come from the beauty of cave paintings, others are results of residencies and workshops around the world. But the underlying fact remains how Gulammohammed Sheikh used his practice as a means of democratising art.
Notable works like Horses and Early Lithographs (1960-63) capture the essence of a then-struggling artist by portraying a solitary horse wandering about its surroundings; or in Riot and the Violence Prints (1968-93), he portrays a burning Gujarat amid riots and uses his canvas to show how art can navigate society or vice versa, even in the darkest times.
The second gallery, which focuses on the theme Mind Prints, refers to the use of digital printmaking. Gulammohammed Sheikh was one of the few artists who welcomed technology into his practice and has been using it since 2001. It is interesting to note that since technology in the 2000s replaced manual work, he calls it ‘Mind Prints’.
His futuristic vision lay in adopting technology and its developments, making them pivots for finding, composing and creating images. While his hand-drawn works are mostly in muted colours, with monochromes dominating the frames, his digital works display vibrant colours and bright saturation. Major influences are drawn from Kabir’s quotes, Mughal miniatures, Renaissance paintings, world cinema, and Ebstorf Mappamundi. What makes the exhibition interesting is the variety of techniques, similar motifs and the influence Bhupen Khakar has on his works.
The highlights in Mind Prints include his earliest digital work called Talisman Twins (2001), which draws from beliefs and imagery from different cultures and Kaavad: Home (2008 -2011), which draws from Rajasthani culture as a portable shrine and storytelling device.
Hand Prints / Mind Prints is on display till August 2.
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