Gallery Sumukha presents Gulammohammed Sheikh: Graphic Prints, a two-part retrospective looking at the artist’s printmaking practice from 1950s to the present, curated by Pushpamala N.
Part I is conceived as an archive, exploring Sheikh’s handmade prints including his forays into little magazines using printmaking, and his interest in working collaboratively to democratise art and ideas. As a high school boy in Surendranagar in the early 1950s he illustrated and wrote for a handwritten literary magazine, Pragati (Progress), whose single copy would be kept on the local library table to peruse. It can be seen as a precursor to his later interests when as an art student in Baroda, he learnt printmaking and became active in Gujarati literary circles. His printmaking took an autobiographical turn in late 1960s when he also began writing his Memoirs in free-flowing prose.
Starting out as a printmaker working within a modernist idiom, his work over the years, strongly influenced by his literary and art historical interests, turned magic realist. Soon, with the advent of digital printmaking in India, he became one of the pioneers to use the technology – but that will be surveyed in Part II of the retrospective.
Find out more on the show here.