Himmat Shah: artist, alchemist, rebel

Himmat Shah refused to be part of the mainstream, instead focusing on metamorphosing his medium and materials in the most versatile ways — with a distinctly Indian aesthetic

Last year, Himmat Shah had his biggest solo exhibition. I met the artist at Bikaner House in New Delhi, where he greeted me with a strong, warm handshake and a heartfelt smile. There was no inkling that we would lose him soon. Shah passed away in Jaipur on March 2 at the age of 91; he leaves behind a body of work that brings abstraction and modernity to Indian sculptural expression.

Himmat Shah | Ninety and After: Excursions of a Free Imagination showcased the breadth of the modernist sculptor’s work — his bronze and terracotta sculptures and a selection of old and new drawings. It was a monumental homage to an artist whose works have primarily been presented in the museum space rather than commercial art galleries.

“Himmat Shah embraced the liberating nature of art with the free-spiritedness of a bohemian, and appeared to be naturally attuned to the ‘local’. He abandoned anything he believed to be superfluous, and that would not synchronise with his pursuit of creative fulfilment,” says Roobina Karode, chief curator of Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, who was a guest advisor for the exhibition.

Previously, in 2016, she had curated a retrospective of his sculptural work, Hammer on the Square, at KNMA Saket. The 300 works featured — including his terracotta and bronze sculptures, silver high-relief pieces, drawings, etchings, photos and brochures — offered a historical perspective to his work. “His idiosyncratic and sensitive disposition developed in him distinct and strong artistic ideas,” she adds, emphasising that the beauty of Shah’s work resides in his inherent defiance to be clubbed into a single medium. He was an alchemist, “metamorphosing his medium and material in the most versatile ways”.

Shah was born in Lothal, Gujarat, in 1933. Growing up close to one of the prominent sites of the Indus Valley Civilisation shaped his sensibilities, giving him a strong sense of history and culture. Visits to a local potter’s kiln and making toys with his mother also had a deep impact on him.

After attending J.J. School of Art in Bombay to train as a drawing teacher, he moved to Baroda on a government cultural scholarship, where he was inspired by artists N.S. Bendre and K.G. Subramanyan. In 1967, a French government scholarship to study etching also had him travelling to Paris to study under English printmaker S.W. Hayter and sculptor Krishna Reddy at the influential Atelier 17, the art school and studio. During this time, he exhibited paintings at the Biennale de Paris.

For years he worked with clay, creating a strong artistic vocabulary and creating techniques such as slip casting sculptures. His creative oeuvre also spanned drawings, silver relief paintings, burnt paper collages, ceramics and murals — his massive brick and concrete reliefs can be seen at St. Xavier’s School in Ahmedabad. He created three massive 18 x 20 foot walls, one of which features 40 relief murals.