Himmat Shah

Acquired directly from the artist in 2007

G. Sinha, An Unreasoned Act of Being: Sculptures by Himmat Shah, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, illustration p. 48-49

Himmat Shah, a National Cultural Scholar, originally studied painting at M.S. University, Baroda. In 1967 he received a French government scholarship to study etching at the renowned Atelier 17 in Paris. Shah was also member of the artist collective, Group 1890, founded by the celebrated modern painter Jagdish Swaminathan. The artist had a natural predilection for drawing early on, which set him up well in terms of his negotiations with form and space in a freely expressive manner. In the late 1960s he began to execute monumental sculptures whilst at St Xavier’s School, Ahmedabad, and since then started working on sculpture in terracotta and ceramics.

Upon his move to Delhi, where he is now based, he experimented with various clays, metals and slips to develop a unique visual vocabulary. Indeed his most recognised works remain these ‘heads’, which are fashioned with clay and baked, then cased into bronze. These heads take inspiration from the post-Rodin modernist sculptors, like Constantin Brancusi and Jacob Epstein. The minimal sculptures represent a mix of influences where Western modernist idioms meet Eastern temple forms and primitive tribal traces. The totemic objects also strangely resemble humans, yet their contours defined uniquely; suppressed, elongated yet wholly brooding.

This life–sized work is a fascinating meditation on materiality and texture. There is clearly a primordial connect and a symbolic link with nature. The artist recently had a landmark retrospective at the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Delhi entitled Hammer on the Square, which showcased many of these magnificent totemic heads across a range of media.

'If one stands back to take a telescopic view of his sculpture, it would probably fall in the areas of enigma, domesticity and sheer whim. Himmat turns conventional scale into mockery and allows for sheer play to dominate his vision, wherein architectural structures are dwarfed and heads enlarged to an enigmatic monumentality. Himmat Shah's work does not appear to judge the human condition. Instead, it appears to present its existential state, through terms that defy simple definition' (G. Sinha, An Unreasoned Act of Being: Sculptures by Himmat Shah, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, overleaf).